(Florometra magellanica) occurs in deep water on the Central 

 American coast from the Bay of Panama to the Gulf of 

 California. It is therefore only reasonable to suppose that, 

 though the Humbolt current disappears as a surface current 

 under the equator, it continues in its original direction as a 

 deep current to the Central American coast, carrying with 

 it along the bottom such organisms, as crinoids, as are able 

 to accomodate themselves to a deep water habitat. 



It is probable that the intermediate water about the Gala- 

 pagos Islands is in reality the water of the western portion of 

 the Humbolt current at this latitude, and that therefore many 

 of the organisms now known from moderate depths about those 

 islands will eventually prove to inhabit also similar or compa- 

 rable depths along the South American coast to the southward. 

 Among such organisms, as an example, I may mention the 

 curious stalked crinoid Calamocrinus diomedœ, now known 

 from the Galapagos Islands and from Central America, a 

 distribution most easily explained by supposing it to be, like 

 Florometra magellanica, in reality an inhabitant of the water 

 of the Humbolt current. 



The occurrence of Calamocrinus diomedœ in the Galapagos 

 Islands and off the Central American coast should be considered 

 in connection with the distribution of the species of the allied 

 genus Ptilocrinus, which is represented off the Queen Charlotte 

 Islands, British Columbia (Ptilocrinus pinnatus), and in the 

 antarctic regions in the vicinity of Cape Horn (Ptilocrinus 

 antarcticus and Pt. brucei). 



While we are concerned chiefly with the facts brought out 

 by the distribution of the species of the genus Florometra, it 

 may not be out of place to mention the corroborative evidence 

 along the same lines offered by the distribution of the stalked 

 crinoids of the west American coast, all of which are better 

 fitted for an abyssal habitat than are the species of Florometra. 



Calamocrinus diomedœ occurs in the Galapagos Islands in 

 392 fathoms, and off Panama in 782 fathoms ; this is the only 

 known species in the genus. 



Ilycrinus australis occurs in the antarctic abysses southeast 



(285) 



