The following pages contain an account of a collection of Holothurians brought from New Zealand by one of us some years ago, and may be regarded as a continuation of the " Observations on the Holothurians of New Zealand " published in the Linnean Society's Journal (Zoology) in 1897 (vol. xxvi. p. 22). Since that date only three species have been added to this section of the New-Zealand fauna, viz. Cucumaria Filholi, PliyllopJiorus anatinus, and Caudina pulchella, all of which are described by Professor Remy Perrier in his memoir on the Antarctic Holothurians of the Natural History Museum of Paris *. It appears to us, however, to be very doubtful whether these three species can be maintained, and we incline to the belief that they are synonymous respectively with Cucumaria alba (Hutton), Pliyllopliorus longidentis (Hutton), and Caudina coriacea (Hutton). This question, however, need not be discussed at present.We may also note in this place that a previously doubtful species of Hutton, Cucumaria turhinata, has been re-examined, from the type specimen, by Herdman and Pearson, and has been recorded from Ceylon. Pearson describes and figures the species in his paper on the Ceylon Holothurians f.In this paper we venture to propose no less than six new species, viz., Stichopus simidans, Pliyllopliorus dearmatus, P seudocucumis hicolumnatus, Chirodota gigas, Chirodota geminifera, and Rliabdomolgus novce-zealandice ; while Holotliuria difficilis, Semper, is recorded from Norfolk Island. Of these by far the most remarkable is Rliabdomolgus 7iova;-zealandice. A description of this species was actually prepared by one of us in 1896, based on a single specimen, but was not published at the time because it was thought that the absence of spicules, characteristic of the genus Rliabdomolgus, might be due in the case of our specimen to the solvent action of the formalin in which the specimen was preserved. An experiment made on the spicules of Chirodota dunedinensis showed that the spicules of that species were dissolved in formalin (probably owing to the decomposition of the latter) ; therefore it was considered unsafe to rely upon formalin material, * Annales des Sciences Naturelles, Zoologie, 1905, p. 1. t Herdman's Pearl-Oyster Reports, Supp. No. 6, 1903
