THE ECHINODERMS OF THE WOODS HOLE REGION. 
By HUBERT LYMAN CLARK, 
Professor of Biology , Olivet College. 
As used in this report, the Woods Hole region includes that part of I he New 
England coast easily accessible in one-day excursions by steamer from the U. S. Fish 
Commission station at Woods Hole, Mass. The northern point of Cape Cod is the 
limit in one direction, and New London, Conn., is the opposite extreme. Seaward 
the region would naturally extend to about the 100- fathom line, but for the purposes 
of this report the 50-fathom line has been taken as the limit, the reason for this 
being that as the Gulf Stream is approached we meet with an echinodcrm fauna so 
totally different from that along shore that the two have little in common. This 
deep-water fauna, characterized by such species as Antedon dentata , Schisaster fragilix, 
Astrojjecten america/rms , etc., is exceedingly interesting, but unfortunately too little 
is known about it at present to make a report in any degree satisfactory or complete. 
This paper, therefore, concerns itself only with the shallow-water species, all included 
herein having been taken in less than 10 fathoms, and, with one or two exceptions, 
in less than 15. No species is included which has not been actually taken within 
the above-mentioned limits. 
The purpose of this article is not merely to aid students and collectors at 
Woods Hole to identify the echinoderms which they find, but also to furnish descrip- 
tions and figures of such accuracy that students of echinoderms elsewhere may be 
able to determine beyond question whether the species which they collect are identical 
with those occurring at Woods Hole. At present very few of the common littoral 
echinoderms of America are described in such a way as to make their positive 
identification possible by one not a specialist, and good figures are even more rare. 
Particularly is this true of the asteroids and holothurians. Thanks to Lyman and 
Alexander Agassiz, ophiuroids are well described, and echinoids well figured. In 
both these cases, however, the publications referred to are not only inaccessible to 
the average student, but are out of print. It therefore seems wise to gather into 
one report all the echinoderms of this region. 
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