50 
SUMMARY OF CURRENT RESEARCHES RELATING TO 
750 fathoms. Three are not known above 1000 fathoms. Special 
attention is directed to the extension into deep water of what are 
commonly regarded as characteristically shore-forms, and it is pointed 
out that more discoveries of this kind are to be expected. The fifth 
table of distribution deals with divisions of the “ British Area,” of which 
there are nine taken — Faeroe Channel, W. Scotland, S. and W. Ireland, 
Irish Sea, St. George’s Channel, English Channel, North Sea, Shetland 
and Channel Islands. 
A word of praise is due to the plates, the first six of which will be 
more particularly interesting to the microscopist, as they are devoted to 
the spicules of Holothurians ; no connected series of the spicules of 
British Holothurians have ever been before published, although it is 
now some years since the author called the attention of the Society to 
the necessity of this.* * * § 
In conclusion, we may congratulate the author on having, even so 
late in the day, discovered the proper form of the technical name of the 
group with which he has been concerned. He, here, very properly 
speaks of Echinoderma instead of Echinodermata, and if he should ever 
write a Catalogue of British Zoophytes and Anemones it is to be hoped 
he will call them Coelentera and not Coelenterata. 
Echinoderms from Y^est Coast of Ireland.^— Prof. F. Jeffrey Bell 
has a report on the Echinoderms collected off the West Coast of Ireland 
under the auspices of the Royal Dublin Society. The most interesting 
material was collected at 500 fathoms off county Mayo. Special 
attention is drawn to the great amount of variation exhibited by Asthe- 
nosoma hystrix and by a new species of Astropecten — A. sphenoplax. 
A recently described form, Asterias murrayi , only known hitherto from 
the West Coast of Scotland, was obtained. Sir Wyville Thomson dis- 
tinguished two species of Asthenosoma — A. liystrix and A. fenestratum, but 
it is now shown that the amount of calcification of the plates of the test 
is a point in which individuals living together may differ among 
themselves. The differences in the size of the genital pores is, it is 
suggested, not a specific but a sexual character. 
Larvae of Echinoids4 — M. H. S. Greenough has investigated larvae 
by means of an apparatus which allows of rapid rotation around a 
horizontal axis under the Microscope ; this permits of the determination 
of the form of a disturbed or isolated object and the relations of its 
different parts better than the ordinary method. In a living larva, 
about twenty-four hours old and stained with Bismarck-brown, a cap of 
the subspherical surface bounding the segmental cavity budded off 
mesoblastic cells ; a large free mesoblastic cell was also observed. In 
a living larva, a day older, the hypoblast of which was already flattened 
but not yet invaginated, this layer was lined by two mesoblastic bands 
quite recognizable though little differentiated. 
Larva of Asterias vulgaris.§— Mr. G. W. Field has been able to 
examine a large number of the larvae of this star -fish, which are 
* See this Journal, 1883, pp. 481-4. 
f Sci. Proc. R. Dublin Soc., vii. (1892) pp. 520-9 (3 pis.). 
X Bull. Soc. Zool. France, xvii. (1891) p. 239. 
§ Quart. Journ, Micr. Sci., xxxiv. (1892) pp. 105-28 (3 pis.). 
