324 PROCEEDINGS: BOSTON SOCIETY NATURAL HISTORY. 
tions I have examined. There are before me, altogether, 30 speci¬ 
mens of holothurians, representing 4 species ; 14 echinoids, repre¬ 
senting 8 species; 9 ophiuroids, representing 3 species; and 76 
asterids, representing 10 species ; a total of 129 specimens, repre¬ 
senting 25 species. The echinoderm fauna of the Pacific coast of 
North America needs careful investigation and thorough revision. 
Many of the species are inadequately described, while almost 
nothing is as yet known of the holothurians. Most of the echino- 
derms that are known were originally described either by Brandt or 
by Stimpson, and never have been properly figured, many of them 
not at all. The only attenqpt at a local list of echinoderms from 
the neighborhood of Puget Sound which I have found, is a list of 
17 species (the smaller holothurians were not identified) prepared 
by Mr. Whiteaves of the Canadian Geological Survey, based on a 
collection made along the coast of British Columbia (Trans, roy. 
soc. Canada, iv, 1886). Most of that collection were star-fishes, 
several of which do not appear in the following list. At the present 
time only about thirty or thirty-five species of echinoderms are known 
from the Puget Sound region. The collections made by the Colum¬ 
bia parties are therefore of considerable importance, and though the 
number of species represented is rather small, the majority are of 
more than usual interest. 
Asteroidea. 
The star-fishes comprise more than half of the collection and are 
of much interest, no less than three being new to science, and several 
others having their range considerably extended. The following 
list of ten species represented is remarkable, not only for some 
of the species included, but also for the absence of some which 
would naturally be expected to occur in Puget Sound. The identi¬ 
fication of the star-fishes has been a matter of considerable difficulty 
on account of the brevity of the original descriptions and the absence 
of type specimens for comparison. This is especially true of the 
members of the genus Asterias , and a careful revision of the Pacific 
• coast species of that genus is most certainly a desideratum. 
