WEST INDIAN STARFISHES 



131 



means of larger specimens. In his immature specimens the 

 papular areas were feebly developed, and probably hard to see. 



The Bahama Expedition dredged four good specimens at sta- 

 tion 61. One of these, in alcohol, has the radii 9°^ and 36°™ ; 

 ratio, 1 'A. Marginal plates 26. 



It has about twenty larger, tapered, acute spines on the cen- 

 tral part of the disk, with a number of others bordering and on 

 the papular areas, not so large, and grading do^Ti to the spinose 

 parapaxillae of the radial area, which are scattered among the 

 ordinary form, even to the distal fifth of the ray, those beyond 

 the basal part of the ray having the central spinelet small, but 

 acute, surrounded on the larger ones with an inner circle of 

 about eight to ten very small clavate spinules, and an outer 

 circle of twelve to sixteen or more. Those plates that lack the 

 acute spinelet have a central clavate spinule like those around it, 

 or often two or three of them. Toward the tips of the rays the 

 plates become very small, closely crowded, so that when denuded 

 they are polygonal and in mosaic. They bear few granule-like 

 spinules in small rosettes. 



The papular pores are in a bilobed or V-shaped group, the 

 apex adcentral, each limb having two rows of six to eight each. 

 The two limbs are separated at first only by the single median 

 row of plates, more distally by two or three rows. The two 

 main rows of each limb are separated by a single line of plates, 

 and they converge adcentrally, and finally are united by a line 

 of two or three pores just adcentral to the largest spine on the 

 group, arising from a prominent plate, in the apex of the V. 

 The papular pores are very small and difficult to see, even with 

 a good lens, on some of the specimens. There is sometimes a 

 third short outer row of papulae on each limb in the larger speci- 

 mens. 



The superomarginal plates are rather large, convex, and en- 

 croach upon the disk forming a strong narrow border, widest in 

 the interradial areas, where the sutures are transverse. Beyond 

 the third plate the sutures become more and more oblique and 

 the plates more rhomboidal. Each of these plates, except the 

 first, bears an acute tapered, slender spine, not very long, hardly 

 equal to the length of two adjacent plates. That on the fourth 

 plate is not notably enlarged, those on the second and third be- 



