NOTES AND LITERATURE 



ECHINODERMATA 



Renewed Interest in Recent Crinoids. — Since the lamented death 

 of Dr. P. H. Carpenter in 1891, the recent crinoids have received 

 little attention as compared with the other classes of echinoderms. 

 Aside from the obvious difficulty of securing material, this has 

 been due to certain inherent difficulties which systematic work in 

 this class affords. Carpenter and his successors have recognized 

 but few genera, the largest of these being cosmopolitan in dis- 

 tribution, and the numerous species have appeared to be ill- 

 defined and extremely variable. Consequently aside from A. 

 Agassiz's great monograph on Calamocrinus, a few systematic 

 papers by Hartlaub, Bell, Koehler, Doderlein and Chadwick, 

 a monograph on Antedon bifida, by the last, and an important 

 morphological paper, on arm-regeneration in Comatulids by 

 Minckert, our knowledge of the recent crinoids, and particularly 

 our understanding of the interrelationships of the subordinate 

 groups, was, at the beginning of 1907, about where it was left by 

 Carpenter nearly twenty years before. The cruise of the "Alba- 

 tross" in the North Pacific in 1906 afforded one of her natural- 

 ists, Mr. Austin Hobart Clark, exceptional opportunities for the 

 study of recent crinoids and recognizing the responsibility thus 

 laid upon him, Mr. Clark has during the past year made numer- 

 ous and important contributions to our knowledge. 



His first paper, "Two New Crinoids from the North Pacific 

 Ocean," 1 gives a figure and description of a most remarkable 

 new stalked crinoid, for which the name Phrynocrinus is pro- 

 posed, and of a new species of Bathycrinus, a well-known deep- 

 sea genus of stalked crinoids. So remarkable does Phrynocrinus 

 appear to be that it is suggested a new family, 1 ' Phiynocrinida?, " 

 be established for it. The characters of this family are un- 

 fortunately not suggested, and to one having only an indistinct 

 idea of the characters upon which the already very large num- 

 ber of families (mostly extinct) of stalked crinoids is based, 

 the proposal of a new family does not make a strong appeal. 



On the same date, Mr. Clark published a paper on "A New 



1 Proc. U. S. Nat. Mus., 32, pp. 507-512. 



350 



