Contributions from the Biological Laboratory of the U. S. Fish Commission 
Woods Hole, Massachusetts. 
THE SYNAPTAS OF THE NEW ENGLAND COAST. 
By HUBERT LYMAN CLARK, 
Professor of Biology , Olivet College , Michigan. 
Through the kindness of the United States Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries 
special opportunities were enjoyed during the spring and summer of 189S for carrying- 
on biological investigations at the laboratory of the Fish Commission at Woods Hole, 
Mass. The few weeks at my disposal were devoted to the study of the two liolothur- 
ians of the genus Synapta common at that place. Primarily the object in view was to 
determine the systematic position of our New England synaptas, their relation to each 
other and to European forms. At the same time experiments were carried on designed 
to throw light on the function of certain organs and on the possibilities of regeneration 
in Synapta. The latter were, however, limited by the shortness of my stay. 
For the privileges of the laboratory I desire to express my thanks to the Commis- 
sioner, and particularly to the director of the laboratory, Prof. IP. C. Bumpus, whose 
constant kindness, and sympathy made the work doubly pleasant. I desire also to 
acknowledge my indebtedness to Mr. Charles M. Pratt, of New York City, for a very 
fine lot of synaptas from Naples, without Avbich the relation of the American to the 
European species could not have been positively determined. 
THE SYSTEMATIC POSITION OF THE NEW ENGLAND SYNAPTAS. 
On February 5, 1851, at a meeting of the Boston Society of Natural History, Mr. 
W. O. Ayres (’51) described under the name tenuis a synapta which he had found 
abundantly in Boston Harbor and also at Provincetown, Mass., and Sag Harbor, Long 
Island. He separated it from the European species on account of slight differences in 
the “ hooks” and “ plates.” How little the anatomy of the animal was understood is 
shown by the description of the calcareous ring which he says consists “ of 12 pieces of 
granulated structure, some of which are pierced with holes for the admission of water 
in respiration.” The same year Pourtales (’51) read a paper at the meeting of the 
American Association for the Advancement of Science, in Cincinnati, “ On the Holo- 
thurise of the Atlantic coast of the United States,” in which he described the common 
New England synapta under the name girardii , but he says that the only differences 
he can find between it and the European S. inhaerens (O. F. Mull.) are that the anchors 
are less curved and the plates more rounded. He seems to have been unacquainted 
with Ayres’s paper, which was presented three months before his own. 
In 1867, Verrill (’67) refers to our common synapta under the name of tenuis, and 
proposes to make it the type of a new genus Leptosynapta, “distinguished by their 
more slender form, the absence of prominent verruca;, fewer (12), shorter, and more 
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