Mr Kobert Brown on Astrophyton scutatum. 369 



has well repaid me for any little hardships and dangers 

 I may have undergone in gaining it ; and I take this op- 

 portunity of thanking Captain George Deuchars of the s.s. 

 " Narwhal/' and his officers, for the ready and intelligent 

 assistance they tendered me whenever it lay in their power. 

 The few observations which I have been enabled to make, I 

 shall have the honour of laying before the Society at a future 

 time. In the meantime I exhibit this specimen of Astro- 

 phyton scutatum, Link, Mem., et Forbes (Brit. BcMn., p. 67), 

 which I obtained, in September 1861, on the west side of 

 Davis Strait, about a mile off Cape Kater, clinging to a 

 whale line, from 150 to 200 fathoms — rocky and clayey 

 bottom. It was laden with ova of a deep-red colour. I 

 found nothing in its stomach but Diatomacese, and a spe- 

 cimen of an Entomostracan, closely allied to, if not iden- 

 tical with, Cetochilus arcticus of Baird, in the " Appendix to 

 Sutherland's Voyage," vol. ii. p. cciii., the presence of which, 

 however, may, with a specimen of a species of Yoldia em- 

 braced in its arms, be only accidental. (It may be men- 

 tioned as a curious fact, that this Cetochilus forms a great 

 portion of the food of the " commercial" whale (Balcena 

 mysticetus), a much disputed point, and of some of the 

 minuter species of Acalephre.) 



Astrophyton scutatum has been occasionally got among 

 the Northern Isles of Scotland (where it bears the rather 

 classical name of Argus) and Norway.* 



It has been found, however, very rarely, and at distant 

 periods, in the Arctic seas. Otho Fabricius, in his remark- 

 ably accurate Fauna Grcenlandica (Hafnue et Lipsise, 1780), 

 speaks of it (p. 372) as follows : — " Asterias caput medusce. 

 Hanc in museo plurimum reverendi Dn. Egede de colonia 

 Jacobshavn (ni fallor) missam, vidi : unde concludo, in sinu 

 Disco dari ; non autem vivam ipse offendi 



Whether Fabricius refers here to Hans Egede, the pioneer 

 missionary of Greenland (1721), or to his son, Paul Egede, 

 also a missionary in Greenland, and both of whom published 



* The secretary of the Zoological Society lately exhibited a specimen at 

 one of their meetings from the southern seas. (" Habitat in omni oceano, 

 imprimis Pelagico." — Linn. Syst., \. 663, Ed. 10.) 



