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

154 COLLECTIONS FROM MELANESIA.the interesting A. julrsi, of which Mr. Carpenter has already indicatedthe more essential characters, is indeed represented in thiscollection, as it is probably in any fair collection of the marine faunaof the Australian coast.Yet, again, in a paper which will be shortly published in the'Journal of the Linnean Society ' *, Mr. Carpenter describes eightout of the nine specimens of Antedon from the Hamburg Museumas new, and he speaks in the introduction as estimating the speciesof Comatulids at something like 400.Further, it is of great significance to observe that many of thespecies here enumerated or described were collected at one stationonly.Lastly, we note that the number of Aiitedonsis larger than mighthave been expected ; for in the Moluccas "Antedon seems to be comparativelyrare "t, while of the 29 species here enumerated, 16 belongto that genus. From such material as has passed through myhands, I am inclined to think that on the northern and easterncoasts of Australia we shall find Antedon to be rather more abundantlyrepresented in species than Actinometra ; the time, however,for any generalization is still far off.In entering into the detailed enumeration of the proportion of newto old species, I had not in view the purpose of apologizing for thepresence of so many new forms in this collection, but rather thedesire of directing attention to facts which can only be within theknowledge of a limited number of special students ; those whoknow how few species of Comatida' have been described, and howrich in novelties not only new collections but old museums are, willnot think that there is any suspicious wealth of new species in thevery valuable and important collection by which Dr. Coppinger hasmore than doubled the number of specimens and species in thepossession of the British Museum j.So large a number of new species should be presented in somekind of arrangement, either in the form of a phylogenetic table orof a "key." The former being an impossibility at present, onaccount of our unsatisfactory knowledge of the ancestry of theComatulidae, and keys being, of all things, the most tmscientific,I propose to give formulae for all the species of Comatulids heredescribed, basing those formulae on the method I proposed to the ZoologicalSociety§, as improved by the suggestions of Mr. Carpenter ||.* Jouni. Linn. Soe. xvi. p, 487.t Notes Leyd. Mus. iii. p. 191.[The above is allowed to stand, though wi'itten some eighteen months\ago, as it puts more forcibly than a briefer and colder statement could, thepresent tenuity of our knowledge of Ci-inoid species and the wide area that isopenmg up to us.—Dee. 4, 1883.]§ P. Z. S. 1882, p, .530.IIP. Z. S. 1882, p. 731. I retain A' as the sign for Actinometra, as a is usedin the formula? of the cirri ; and I propose to \ise br for the brachials, as h islikewise used in the formulre of the cirri. Siniilarlj' I omit the 10, as A 10followed by A 3 (in such a list as the following) is very apt to mislead.