mj a „d Zoology. 417 



tip; some will die ^\lt\l swollen disk; others t 

 some will have the rays collapsed and flattened ; others will have 

 them round and plump, or angular; some will have the spines 

 erect; others, more imperfectly preserved, will have them flattened 

 down and more or less detached. Moreover, the plates in some 

 will be so closely drawn together by the contraction of the 

 muscles of the skin as to give them a rigid character, while others, 

 perfectly identical, if they die in a relaxed or inflated condition 

 will have the plates separated by the looser integuments so as to 

 give them an openly reticulated appearance, with wider naked 

 spaces between the plates. Hence all such characters should be 

 used with great caution. 



_ It is*, therefore, evident that any naturalist who would correctly 

 limit the species in this group should at least have a very large 

 number of specimens preserved, as well as possible, in various ways, 

 and still better, when possible, he should collect large numbers of the 

 living specimens and after studying them in life and making notes 

 upon them he should preserve, and afterwards compare them with 

 bis notes. In this difficult group there are probably no species 

 more variable and perplexing than those forms allied to Asterias 

 ruhens of Europe, and A. vulgaris and A. Forhesii, the common 



New England species. And yet in this very group jVl. I'erner 

 attempts to decide the specific characters of our species, and to 

 correct their synonymy after an examination of very few (some- 

 times only one), and often very badly preserved dry specimens 

 [A. pallidus). And in doing this he relies on characters that are 

 notoriously variable, and even upon those accidental features due 

 to modes of preservation, as stated above. 



As M. Perrier particularly refers (pp. 354-7) to my own views 

 in regard to our native species, as expressed in several former 

 papers,* and seems to think it strange that ray conclusions in 1873 

 differed slightly from those held in "1866, I may be pardoned 

 for stating that during the ten years that have elapsed since my 

 first paper on the subject was published, these starfishes have been 

 collected, studied, and preserved by me in very great numbers, 

 and from hundreds of localities, during the various dredging expe- 

 ditions that I have undertaken along our coast, some of which 

 have been noticed in former volumes of this Journal. Therefore, 

 having carefully examined many hundreds of specimens, in all 

 conditions, and having taken ten years to consider the mat- 

 ter and to discuss it with others, I feel perfectly confident that 

 M. Perrier has made at least five American "species" out of 

 specimens that actually represent but two. These errors would 

 have been more excusable had they not been made subsequently to 

 my revision of the synonymy, for he might have supposed that my 

 materials were far more ample than his own. The facts are as 

 follows : Upon the coast of New England there are, as yet known, 

 * Proceedings Boston Society of Natural History, vol. i, p. 333, 1866 ; Re- 

 port on the Invertebrata of Southern New England, Report of U. S. Commission 

 of Pish and Fisheries, Part I, 1813 (pubUshed March, 1874). 



