58 TRANSACTION* LIVERPOOL BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



great value which have now been incorporated in all text- 

 books of Zoology. He confirmed the view that Millepora 

 is a stony Hydroid, and he was able to prove that all the 

 Stylasteridaa also belong to that group, and incidentally his 

 work overthrew the old-established group of the Tabulate 

 Corals. In another section of this report he gives an account of 

 the important discovery, which he made at the Philippine 

 Islands, that Heliopora, the blue coral, is really an Alcyonarian. 

 Amongst the Echinoderm reports, that on the Crinoidea 

 is perhaps the most interesting and important. It may be 

 recalled that it was the discovery by G-. 0. Sars in 1864 of the 

 stalked Crinoid, Rhizocrimis, a member of the Jurassic and 

 Cretaceous family Apiocrinidae, still living in the deep fjords 

 of Norway, that stimulated Sir Wyville Thomson and Dr. W. B. 

 Carpenter to promote the cruises of the " Lightning " in 1868, 

 and of the " Porcupine " in 1869 and 1870, and thus led up to 

 the " Challenger " expedition. Sir Wyville had intended himself 

 to describe the stalked Crinoids, and had made some progress 

 in the examination and classification of the specimens and 

 in the preparation of some of the plates when his break- down 

 in health prevented any further work of the kind. The reports 

 on these and on the Comatulida were eventually prepared 

 by Dr. Carpenter's distinguished son, Dr. P. H. Carpenter, 

 who as a lad had been his father's assistant on one of the 

 cruises of the " Porcupine." The. " Challenger " results 

 definitely showed that, in place of being as was supposed 

 " a group on the verge of extinction," the stalked Crinoids 

 were widely distributed and showed scarcely any decrease 

 in numbers since the times of their ancestors in Mesozoic 

 seas. Some of the Echinoidea described in the report by 

 Professor Alexander Agassiz resemble the Ananchytidae 

 of the Chalk, others are related to the extinct Galerites ; while 

 Cystechinus, with a thin flexible test, recalls the Palaeozoic 

 Palseechinidae. Some of the Echinothuridae, with flexible 



