^ BRITTLE STARFISHES 287 



The commonest hue is a vivid salmon red, but orange 

 as well as most liberal-conceited shades of terra-cotta 

 and pink are often seen, and a few species are a 

 rich chestnut brown. The Brisingas and Freyellas 

 are usually of a flaring vermilion colour, but Pedi- 

 cellasier atrattts from 220-419 fathoms is black as jet, 

 and Palmipes pellucidtis is like ground glass. As a 

 rule the colours are simple and uniform, but Milteli- 

 phaster wood-7nasoni from 230-290 fathoms is a brilliant 

 exception, for in this truly magnificent species every 

 one of the plates of the exoskeleton is picked out 

 in red, the result showing as a scarlet network on a 

 yellow background like the full dress of the most 

 gorgeous of cavalry. 



Wherever the bed of the sea is calcareous, there in 

 these latitudes, in depths up to 1000 fathoms and over, 

 we find swarms of Brittle-starfishes {Ophiuroided), 

 as we also do on the rich mud of the abyssal slope 

 of the Malabar coast ; but except in their colours, 

 which are commonly pink, or scarlet and purple, or 

 violet, or bright orange, they do not differ in appear- 

 ance and structure from the sombre-hued types that 

 live upon the reefs, with which indeed, many of them 

 are congeneric. 



Dr Koehler, who has named and described the 

 Investigator collections, distinguishes fifty-six deep-sea 

 species, of which nine were dredged in depths exceed- 



