Excerpt from Illustrated Catalogue of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, at Harvard College, Vol. 7 of 4: Revision of the Echini

The present Revision of the Echini has been in my hands for the-- greater part of six years, its publication has been delayed from the impossibility of examining a large number of the original specimens of the principal writers on the subject. Its earlier appearance would have been useless without such an examination. This was made during a recent visit to Europe, when the species of Echini (with very few exceptions) described during this century were examined, and carefully compared with specimens sent from the Cambridge Museum to Europe for that purpose.

Of many of the specimens we have, of course, only the tradition that they are the originals made use of by various authors, this is especially the case with the types of the older authors in the Jarclin des Plantes and in the British Museum, but as no one has recently attempted to make direct comparisons of the numerous species described independently, it is not astonishing that when such a comparison is made the number of species distinguished should be found to be so small.

To Dr. John E. Gray and the late Dr. Baird of the British Museum I am indebted for giving me every possible facility to examine the collections of the British Museum, containing the types of Dr. Grays Catalogue of Recent Echini, of his papers in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, in the Annals of Philosophy, to Dr. P. L. Sclater for his kind assistance in hunting up the types formerly in the collection of the Zoological Society, and to Dr. Charles Stewart for his aid while working in the rooms of the British Museum.

The collection of Echini made by Professor Percival E. Wright at the Seychelles Islands was examined at Dublin.

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