6 Henry Woodward — On a New Devonian Starfish. 



IV. — Description of a New Species of Starfish from the 

 Devonian of Great Inglebourne, Harbbrton, South Devon. 



By Henky Woodward, F.R.S., F.G.S., etc., 

 of the British Museum. 



PEOBABLY no part of England Tias received more careful atten- 

 tion from geologists than Devonshire, both North ^ and South,'' 

 but although the lists of fossils are';large, the fossils themselves are 

 often very difficult to determine, owing to the cleavage and meta- 

 morphism to which the rocks containing them have been subjected. * 



Starfishes must undoubtedly be reckoned among the rarest of 

 Palseozoic fossils, and next in beauty to the Crinoids. As many as 

 17 genera and 57 species have been described from the Silurian, 5 

 from the Devonian, and 3 from the Carboniferous series, whilst 

 many others yet remain unnoticed in collections. 



In the Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street, are several 

 undescribed specimens from the Upper Devonian of Pilton, N. Devon, 

 which have provisionally been referred by Mr. Etheridge to the 

 genera Protaster and Palceaster.^ The following is a transcript of 

 my note-book at the time I examined them. 



No. 1. Protaster, sp., Upper Devonian, Pilton. 

 An elegant little starfish, with five flexible rays and a somewhat broad disk (very 

 like P. Sedffwickii, Forbes, but not so long in the arms), about one inch in 

 diameter to the extremities of the arms. 

 No. 2. Protaster, sp., Upper Devonian, Pilton. 

 A larger form than the preceding one, four inches in diameter, five-rayed, arms 

 long, flexible, spinose ; the pentagon formed by the oral plates well marked. 

 This species resembles Protaster Miltoni. 

 No. 3. Palceaster (?), sp.. Upper Devonian, Pilton. 



Five-rayed, flexible arms ; this is marked Palceaster, but is probably a Protaster, 

 like No. 2. 

 No. 4. Palceaster, sp.. Upper Devonian, Pilton. 

 A stout- armed, five-rayed Starfish, resembling P. asperrimiis, Salter, and P. im- 

 bricatus, Salter. 



Mr. Etheridge informs me that numerous specimens of new and 

 undescribed Starfish, which had been collected by the late Prof. J. 

 Beete Jukes, F.E.S., during the j)reparation of his papers on North 

 Devon, are preserved in the Museum of the Irish Geological Survey, 

 Dublin ; some are in the hands of Prof. Wy ville Thomson, F.E.S., 

 for examination ; others are to be seen in the cabinet of Townshend 

 M, Hall, Esq., F.G.S., Pilton Parsonage, Barnstaple. 



In a former paper published in this Magazine, " On a New Silurian 

 Starfish, Eucladia JoJinsoni, H. Woodw. (see Geol. Mag. 1869, VoL 

 VI. PL VIII. p. 241), I have given a detailed list of aU tlie Silurian 



1 See Memoir by Mr. Eobert Etheridge, F.R.S., "On the Physical Structure of 

 "West Somerset and North Devon, and on the Paiiseontological Value of the Devonian 

 Fossils," Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. 1867, vol. xxiii. pp. 568-698. 



2 See Memoir by Dr. Harvey B. Holl, F.G.S., " On the Older Eocks of South 

 Devon and East Cornwall," Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. 1868, vol. xxiv. pp. 400-454, 

 and pi. xvi. 



3 See Mr. Etheridge's very elaborate and important paper already quoted, Quart. 

 Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xxiii. p. 619. In another table (p. 670) one of these, Palceaster, 

 is starred as Middle Devonian; this is a typographical error: they are both Upper 

 Devonian forms. 



