322 Proceedings of Royal Society of Edinburgh. [sess. 
abyssicola are “ so small and so delicate and so much broken, that 
he would be a bold man who would ascribe to them specific char- 
acters at all.” 
A closely allied species, A. alternata, P. H. C., is described from 
a chain of localities — north-east of New Zealand, north of Papua, 
near the Kermadecs, and south of Japan. Several other species 
range from Queensland or Torres Strait to Japan, or to the China 
Sea, e.g., A. Copping eri, Bell; A. multiradiata , L. ; A. variipinna, 
Carpenter. Some of the older or better known species have a very 
wide distribution, especially in longitude, e.g., A. tenella , from the 
Kara Sea to the coasts of Portugal and New England, or Actino- 
metra pulchella , Pourt., from the Caribbean Sea, St Paul’s 
Rocks, and the European coast; while in certain other cases, 
e.g., A. carinata , Carpenter, we have an alleged distribution of a 
very extraordinary, circum-tropical kind, including Brazil, Vene- 
zuela, Chili, Ceylon, Seychelles, Zanzibar, Madagascar, the Red 
Sea, and St Helena. We must remember also that the genus 
Antedon contains somewhere about 50 species, and is cosmopolitan 
in its range. 
Drepanophorus serraticollis, Hubrecht. — In regard to the col- 
lection of Challenger Nemertines, Dr Hubrecht, in reporting 
upon it, calls attention to the extreme care with which the broken 
fragments of these fragile animals had been preserved, and to their 
excellent state for purposes of microscopical examination, although 
“it looked far from promising from a systematist’s point of view,” 
colour and outward form being alike lost. The two specimens, 
both broken, assigned to D. serraticollis (which is a common 
Mediterranean species), came from shallow water in Bass’s Straits. 
In so assigning them, Professor Hubrecht writes as follows : — “ It 
needs no comment, that it is at the least rather hazardous to 
identify with a Mediterranean species a specimen in which the 
proboscis as well as its armature is absent. Still the transverse 
sections offer such a very close resemblance to those of actual 
specimens of D. serraticollis that it would be again hazardous to 
establish a new species for the fragments.” .... “I have, more- 
over, hazarded the identification with the foregoing specimens of a 
third fragment collected in the Kerguelen waters, of which not 
only the proboscis but also the head was absent. Here, too, the 
