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Show J MR. F. J. BELL ON A NEW GENUS OF ECHINOIDS. 43 4. On Palceolampas, a new Genus of the Echinoidea. By F. JEFFREY BELL, B.A., F.R.M.S., F.Z.S., Professor of Comparative Anatomy in King's College, London. [Received January 27, 1880.] (Plate IV.) There is, perhaps, no experience which is more full of instruction to the zoologist than the discovery of forms as recent that have been previously regarded as extinct. In no group of the animal kingdom have the explorations of the last few years reaped so large a harvest as among the Echinoidea, as Salenia and Conoclypeus1 would suffice to bear witness, were not such forms as Phormosoma aud Asthenosoma still more remarkable. But there is yet another possibility- possible, indeed, in the case of terrestrial animals, but infinitely more probable in the case of deep-sea forms; it is this : we may at times be fortunate enough to find examples of genera which, though hitherto not registered as fossil, yet proclaim by their general aspect, structure, and relations their archaic characters and the great length of time during which they must have existed as distinct forms. Prime among such creatures stands the remarkable Brisinga, which, though " the most primitive and therefore the oldest of all Echinoderms,"2 has not yet been known to naturalists for a quarter of a century3. Very far from being either as important or as interesting as this ancient Starfish, the irregular Echinid which I now propose to describe to the Society is of interest as filling a gap in our series of forms. Nearly every naturalist who has seen it has at first thought that he had seen it before; but further investigation has, in all cases, led to the view that the form is different from any yet observed. To this statement there is but one exception : Dr. R. H. Traquair, F.R.S.E., of the Museum of Science and Art in Edinburgh, informed me some months ago that he had a specimen generically, if not specifically identical, which had come into his hands when the collection of the late Dr. S. P. Woodward was dispersed. Dr. Traquair most kindly and generously offered to send m e notes and drawings of this specimen ; but the arduous duties of his post at Edinburgh have been hitherto an obstacle in his way; and while I regret that I have to describe the specimen in the collection of the British Museum without giving an account of the Edinburgh example, I have felt too much sympathy with m y friend and colleague to have pressed him too hardly to add to his labours. Some day, perhaps, in the future Dr. Traquair will himself give an account of the form under his care. The specimen now to be described came into the possession of the Trustees of the British Museum so long ago as January 1852; but it 1 A. Agassiz, Bull. M. C. Z. v. no. 9, p. 190. 2 G. O. Sars, 'Researches on the Structure and Affinity of the genus Brisinga' (1875), p. 94. 3 ' Fauna littoralis Norvegire,' ii. (1856) p. 9a. |