Generic Name 0 / Asterias sanguinolenta. 473 
same extent as an earlier [is] to be wholly cancelled; ” so 
Agassiz would have done better had he kept his expressive 
name to himself, and Gribrella must fall out of our nomen- 
clature altogether. 
But in this case what is to be done with Asterias sanguino- 
lenta? One would imagine that it was in sad want of a 
generic name when Edward Forbes perpetrated the robbery 
which is now only (after half a century!) revealed to a world 
that has been taught to revere his name. In mitigation we 
may say that it might have so seemed to him ; for, just before 
his work was issued from the press, and certainly after it left 
his hands, Gray proposed the name of Henricia for the Aste- 
rias oculata of Pennant, which is the Asterias sanguinolenta 
of O. F. Muller*; and, indeed, he thought perhaps he was 
justified, for he had placed the species in Nardo’s genus 
Linckia (Mem. Wern. Soc. viii. p. 120) in 1839, and dis- 
covered his error and the fact that Gribrella was a synonym 
for that name a little later. 
The claims of Gray’s name are incontestable ; the necessity 
for changing the significance of such a well-known term as 
Gribrella is most distressing, and I am very sorry that it has 
fallen to my lot to have thus to upset a nomenclature which 
we all know and which, I fear, I shall in my heart continue 
to use, 
I cannot conceive how or why succeeding writers have let 
the matter stand in this disorderly manner so long. Some 
— to cite the most careful of them, Mr. Sladen — write Gribrella 
(pars); but certainly Agassiz does not include anything, either 
recent or fossil, under his generic name which can by any 
possibility be supposed to be congeneric with A . sanguino- 
lenta. 
The correct synonymy of the genus appears to stand 
thus 
Henricia. 
Henricia , Gray, Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. vi. (1840), p. 184. 
Linkia , Forbes, not Nardo, Mem. Wern. Soc. viii. (1839), p. 120. 
Cribella , Forbes, not Ag., Brit. Starf. (1841), p. 106. 
Gribrella , Liitken, Gronl, Echinod. (1857), p. 30, et mult. al, usque ad 
Sladen in Ohall. Rep., Ast. (1889), p. 540. 
Echinaster , M. Tr. Syst. Ast. (1842), p. 22 (pars). 
* The dates appear to be : — the part of Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. (vi. 
p. 184) which contained Gray’s name Henricia was published Nov. 1840; 
Forbes’s p. 100, on which Cribella appeared, was probably published 
Dec. 1st, 1841. Messrs. Gurney and Jackson have been so obliging as to 
give me the dates of publication of the six parts of Forbes’s 1 British 
Starfishes ; ’ they were published on the first of each month from October 
1840 to March 1841. But the work as a whole must be quoted 1841. 
Ann. & Mag. N. Hist . Ser. 6. Vol. vi. 34 
