183 
Zanzibar. The collection contains a very fine specimen 
from Zanzibar, with arms about 110 mm. long; as is usual in east 
African specimens, the carination of the brachials is much reduced, 
appearing only as slight median rounded, somewhat elongate, 
tubercles in the distal half of the brachials. The peculiar abrupt 
termination of the arms, characteristic of the family, is remarkably 
well shown. The colour is a deep purple. 
East Indies. A specimen from somewhere in the East 
Indies also has the brachial carination but slightly marked, and 
agrees well with specimens at hand from the "South Pacific”, 
taken by the United States Exploring Expedition. This specimen, 
and also two others which have no data in regard to locality, are 
peculiar in being white. 
Specimens from South Africa, east Africa, the East Indies, 
and the south Pacific ocean are very uniform in their characters, 
and agree in having a moderate or slight carination of the brachials; 
on the coast of Brazil and in the West Indies the brachial carination 
is as a rule much stronger, and may be extravagantly developed 
and correlated with spinous distal ends to the pinnule and cirrus 
joints; but, on the other hand, specimens may readily be found 
quite as smooth as any from the Indian Ocean. This enormous 
range in the extent of carination is. accompanied with meristic 
variation, for six-rayed specimens are not at all unusual in Brazil. 
Ås a species introduced into a new locality, provided it survives, 
becomes as a rule much more variable than in its native habitat, 
it might well be argued that Tropiometra carinata is a compara- 
tively new element in the west-central Atlantic fauna, not yet old 
enough to have, through elimination of the economically unfit, attained 
a definate varietal form, the more strongly since the only other 
Species of the genus, and all the remaining genera of the family, 
åre restricted to the seas lying between northern Australia and 
Southern Japan. 
One feature of the distribution of this species is of consider- 
ably more than ordinary interest. In the Lesser Antilles it occurs 
