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THE AMERICAN NATURALIST [Vol. XLII1 



him, representing only two families, the Himerometridte and the 

 Antedonida 1 , in the former the genera Oligometra, Stephano- 

 metra. Dichrometra and lleterometra, and in the latter Irido- 

 metra. All of these genera range throughout the East Indian 

 region, and are characteristic littoral types of that area. 



The first crinoids known from the Red Sea were Tropiomrlra 

 carinata and Ilvtcrom* tra sariipiii, both of which were well fig- 

 ured by Savigny in his "Description de l'Egypt" in 1817, the 

 former identified by Audonin as "Comatula sp.," the latter as 

 ''Comatula mull iradiata." There is no further reference to the 

 first of these figures ; but de Blainville in 1836 copied the second 

 in the atlas to his •'Manuel d'Actinologie" ; in doing this he 

 made a curious mistake, for the plate is lettered ''Comatula 

 adeonce" though in the text the description of Comatula adeonce 

 is taken from Lamarck, and the species is stated to have ten 

 arms. In the following year the "Penny Encyclopedia" copied 

 de Blainville 's account of Comatula adeouu , multiradiate figure 

 and all, and the same slip was made by the "Natural History" 

 of Knight published in 1867. 



Riippel, in the course of his travels, found in the Red Sea 

 an interesting multiradiate comatulid upon which he bestowed the 

 MS. name of Comatula curo-mt las, but he does not appear to 

 have mentioned it anywhere in his works. In 1833 Leuckart 

 came across his specimens in the Senckenburg Museum, and 

 published the name, together with the locality, though without 



In 1841 Professor Johannes Muller described his Alecto savi- 

 gnii, based upon specimens which had been brought from the 

 Red Sea by Ib nipricht and Ehrenberg, and he also identified the 

 Comatula mulfiradiafa of Audonin, figured by Savigny, as this 

 species. In 1S69 von Martens recorded Midler's Alecto palmata, 

 which had been originally described from India, from the Red 

 Sea, though he apparently did not know that this was the same 

 form as that recorded as Comatula hucomdas by Leuckart in 

 1833. 



Nothing more was recorded regarding Red Sea comatulids for 

 some time; Moseley analyzed the coloring matter from an uniden- 

 tified species from Suez (possibly Oligometra serripinna), and 

 Ludwig in 1880 listed two of the species known from that locality, 

 but omitted the third. Carpenter, in the "Challenger" report 

 was unable to add anything, though he increased the known 

 range of HeUromdra savignii by recording it from Muscat and 



