MARINE MISCELLANEA. 243 
by the action of the ambulatory limbs and claws and the complete organism thus 
coustitutes itself a sort of animated centre-bit. While the writer had not the good 
fortune to secure a satisfactory photograph of the Army Crabs on the march, the 
accompanying snapshot taken of about eighty living individuals engaged in a desperate 
mélée, added to the adjacent life-sized drawing, will convey a tolerable idea of the 
aspect and contour of these Crustacean oddities. In this photographic replica, two 
contending crab armies are ostensibly striving for the mastery. A near examina- 
tion will reveal several couples among the general scrimmage engaged in single combat, 
and one or more encuirassed warriors lying hors de combat on the field of battle. 
In the authors volume on the “Great Barrier Reef,” some space and a 
coloured plate have been devoted to the description and delineation of a few of the more 
remarkable members of the Starfish tribe characteristic of that region. The handsome 
cerulean blue, Linckia levigata, the jewel-bestudded Cushion Star, Culcita grex, and 
the massive Nodose Cushion Star, Oreaster nodosus, are among the more noteworthy 
types included in that record. As is the case with the fish, however, the colder waters 
of the Tasmanian seas produce, if not so abundant, yet a goodly number of forms that 
vie with the tropical species in the brilliancy of their tints. Even in our British seas 
the gorgeous crimson and scarlet livery of the familiar Sun Star, Solaster papposa, 
is almost aggressively irradiant with the reflected glow of, as it were, tropic climes. 
The Tasmanian Starfish types that have been chosen for reproduction in 
Chromo-Plate VIII., have been selected with the object more particularly of 
illustrating a few of the almost kaleidoscopic series of colour variations to which 
one particular species is susceptible. The most prominent form in this group, repre- 
sented by Figures 1 to 6 in the Plate quoted, belongs to the same genus as the little 
Asterina gibbosa, or “Starlet” of the British coast, but in this type, Asterina calcar, 
attains to a much more considerable size, and is notable among starfish for its 
octagonal fundamental structure. With the great majority of starfishes and all other 
members of the same class, that of the Echinodermata, the number five, or a pentagonal 
formula, is dominent with reference to both the numbers of arms, angles, and 
internal structural details. The examples of Asterina calcar here figured were all 
obtained within a few yards from one another on the rocky foreshore of Spring Bay, on 
the East Coast of Tasmania. Several plates might have been filled with as conspicuously 
divergent tinted individuals of the same species. No two examples, indeed, are 
precisely alike. The latent possibilities possessed by these many-tinted Starfish for 
utilisation for decorative purposes will possibly occur to the esthetic mind. Surely in 
