Report on the zoological collections made in the Indo-Pacific Ocean ...

ECHTNODERMATA. 1 53CRINOIDEA.In the preparation of this portion of my <strong>Report</strong> I have had thevery considerable advantage of the kindness of Mr. P. Herbert Carpenter,whose work on this group is so well known to, and so highlyappreciated by, his fellow-workers. Mr. Carpenter has not onlybeen good enough to favour me with his opinion on many of thespecies and specimens in the preseut collection, but, at what musthave been considerable trouble to himself, he copied out for methe notes that he had been able to make at various times andplaces on the " type specimens " of the species named by the illustriousfounder of the system of this group ; thanks to this act ofkindness, I have probably escaped from some of the numerous pitfallswhich, with the advance of our knowledge, now surround the studentwho applies himself to Johannes Miiller's descriptions of the differentspecies. As Mr. Carpenter will, in the progress of time, publishhis studies on these Miillerian types, I have thought it proper onthis occasion to do little more than merely note the presence of suchforms in this collection.The proportion of undescribed to described species is no doubtappalling ; but on making a careful estimate I do not find it to bepractically greater than in the case of my predecessors. In a Notewhich I communicated to the Zoological Society in May 1882 I gavea list of all the described species, which was very nearly complete :therein were enumerated 37 Antedons and 21 Actmometne. Ofthese, 7 Antedons and 4 Actinometrce were first described in 1881,from the collection of the Leyden Museum, by Mr. Carpenter. Inthat paper the percentages of new to all the known species wererespectively 23 and 23 ; the percentages to new species in the collectionrespectively 70 and 40.As there are here described 12 new species of Antedon^ my percentageto the 37 described forms is 32-5, to all the species mentionedin this Eeport it is 75 ; on the other hand, there are some 5new species of Actinometra, giving a percentage of 23*5 to all thedescribed forms, and of 38 to those enumerated in the accompanyingUst.Against this higher proportion we must, however, set off the factthat five of the earlier species had been described by Miiller fromthe specimens in the Leyden Museum.But the whole story has not yet been told : withovit, of course,wanting in any way to tie Mr. Carpenter down to details, I may addthat his examination of the 'Alert' collection was made after he hadexamined the collection of Crinoids brought together by the officersof H.M.S. ' Challenger,' and entrusted to him for description. Onlya single form among the "new species" in the present collectionhas been detected by Mr. Carpenter to be one of the treasures whichhe has described, but whose description he has not yet published ;