Zoological Reports of the Voyage of H.M.S. “Challenger”

Abstract

THE editor has made most excellent progress in the work of publishing the Reports of the. scientific results of the voyage of H.M.S. Challenger during the past year, as the three bulky quarto volumes now before us well indicate. Vol. V. contains an elaborate Report on the Ophiuroidea by Theodore Lyman, who has made this group so long his special study, and who has in this monograph given us a most elaborate and beautifully illustrated contribution to science. The memoir contains the description of some twenty-one genera and of 170 species, but as several already described species were also collected, Mr. Lyman has judiciously given not only all these but also the names of all others previously described, arranged under their genera, constituting therefore this Report a more or less complete monograph of the Ophiuroidea. There are very elaborate tables of distribution, geographical, bathymetrical, and thermal, with brief remarks on their indications, and at the end of these is a note on the fossil forms and their relations to those living. In the descriptive part of the monograph Mr. Lyman has ventured to use simple words as often as possible, so as not to add to “the jargon in which zoology is now smothering.”

Report on the Scientific Results of the Voyage of H.M.S. “Challenger” during the Years 1873–76, under the Command of Capt. George S. Nares and Capt. F. T. Thomson.

Prepared under the Superintendence of the late Sir C. Wyville Thomson., Director of the Civilian Scientific Staff on board, and now of John Murray, one of the Naturalists of the Expedition. Zoology—Vol. V., 1882; Vol. VI., 1882; Vol. VII., 1883. (Published by Order of Her Majesty's Government.)