98 NATURAL HISTORY BULLETIN 



The adambulacral plates have three series of short, thick, sub- 

 prismatic spines, about four in each series, those of the outer 

 one much smaller. 



Off Bahia, Bra-zil (Sladen). Specimens from off West Florida, 

 in 25 and 26 fathoms (Nos. 18,454-6, Nat. Mus.) appear to be- 

 long to this species. 



Family Oreastebid^ Fisher. 



Pentacerotidce (pars) Gray, 1840 and 1866. Perrier (pars), 1884, 1894. 



Sladen, op. cit., p. 342, 1889; and of many other writers. 

 GoniasteridoB (pars) Verrill, 1867. Perrier (pars), 1875. 

 Oreasteridce Fisher, op. cit., 1911&, p. 18. Verrill, op. cit., p. 282, 1914o. 



Large phanerozonate starfishes which have a large, thick, mas- 

 sive, cushion-like or angulated disk and stout rays. The dorsal 

 areas are large, supported by a reticulated skeleton, leaving large 

 papular areas, containing great numbers of small papular pores, 

 confined to the dorsal surface. The dorsal plates are largely 

 oblong or bar-like, and often have a stellate arrangement. The 

 plates are more or less obscured by a thick granulose dermis. 



The marginal plates are relatively small and inconspicuous, 

 granulated, and covered by dermis. Like the dorsal plates they 

 may also bear large conical spines. 



The interactinal areas are large, covered with thick, tesselated 

 plates, bearing coarse granules, small bivalve pedicellarise, and 

 often one or more stout central spines. Adambulacral plates 

 have a marginal series of spinules, and one or more thick spines 

 on the actinal surface. 



Besides the genus Oreaster, this family includes Culcita,^'^ 



17 The arctic starfish described by Siissbach and Breckner (Seeigel. Seest. 

 Sehlang. N". und Ostsee, p. 217, pi. i, figs. 4-6, 19W) as Culcita torealis, 

 does not belong to this genus nor to the same family. It seems to be gen- 

 erically most nearly related to a large deep-sea form from our northern 

 waters, having a thick dermis and partly aborted dorsal skeleton described 

 by me as Chondraster grandis (op. cit., 1895, p. 137), formerly as Porania 

 grandis (pars), op. cit., 1878, p. 371. 



In this arctic, so-called Culcita, the body is even more swollen and 

 cushion-like, due to a still more rudimentary skeleton, but I see no reasons 

 for separating it from Poraniidse, with which it agrees in other respects. 

 Therefore I have proposed for it a new genus, Culcitopsis, with C. 'borealis 

 for its type. See also Yerrill, 1914c, p. 21. 



