118 MR FORBES ON THE ASTERIADiE OF 



FAMILY ASTERLE, Agassiz. 



I. AST EB IAS, Ag. — Body stellate ; rays flat, with 

 a series of marginal plates ; avenues bordered by nume- 

 rous unequal spines ; suckers biserial. — PL III. Fig. 1. 



I. A. AURANTIACA, Linn* 

 Two specimens of this species (so well described by Dr 

 Johnston, in the paper above referred to), are in the 

 collection of Mr Wallace, Douglas Museum, Isle of Man. 

 They were taken off Douglas Head. It is very probable 

 that the A. bispinosa of Otto has been confounded with 

 the A. aurantiaca on the British shores. 



II. GONIASTEB, Ag. — Body pentagonal, gibbous, 

 thick, not spinous, bordered by a series of laminse edged 

 with spines ; avenues bordered by transverse rows of 

 spines ; suckers biserial. — PI. III. Fig. 2. 



I. G. Templetoni, Thomson MSS.—Ph IV. Fig. 1, 2. 



The body of this species is convex, of a bright scarlet colour, 

 when fresh quite smooth, when dry granularly reticulated, and here 

 and there covered with minute cartilaginous flattened furrowed 

 spiculse. The margin is furnished with a row of tubercles, each 

 bearing three or four blunt spines. The borders of the avenues have 

 transverse rows of longer and more conical spines, four or five in a 

 row. The intermediate triangular spaces are smooth and tessellated ; 

 tessehe oblong. The madriporiform tubercle is small, striate, and 

 placed at some distance from the margin, with which it seems to 

 communicate by a furrow or canal. 



Dredged off the coast of Ballaugh, Isle of Man. Rare. The 

 largest specimen taken measured three and a half inches across. 



This beautiful star-fish is related to the Asterias eques- 

 * Johnston in Mag. Nat. Hist. vol. ix., p. 298, f. 43. 



