A NOTE ON THE OCCURRENCE AND HABITS OF A 



LUMINOUS SQUID (ABRALIA VERANYI) 



AT MADEIRA. 



S. STILLMAN BERRY. 

 REDLANDS, CALIFORNIA. 



Originally made known in very incomplete fashion (vide 

 Riippell, 1844) from individuals taken in the neighborhood of 

 Messina, our knowledge of this extremely interesting species of 

 squid is based on the information gleaned from the very limited 

 number of specimens which have now and then fallen into the 

 hands of students of the group, principally systematists, since that 

 time. These specimens have been entirely Mediterranean in 

 origin, the majority of them, like the type, from Messina, but a 

 few from Nice, Toulon, and so on. Until quite lately it has 

 happened that almost every captured specimen has found its way 

 into the collections of one or another of the German museums. 

 It has therefore somewhat curiously come about that whereas 

 neither Gray three quarters of a century ago, nor Tryon, nor even 

 Hoyle seem to have had any actual material of the species to 

 work upon, Pfeffer's recourse to the Hamburg and other German 

 collections, especially that at Leipzig, yielded him no less than 

 fifteen specimens (Pfeffer, '12, p. 136). More recently some 

 further specimens, likewise taken at Messina, have been the 

 subject of a short but beautiful memoir by Dr. Silvia Mortara 

 ('22) on the histology of the photophores. Practically the whole 

 of our real knowledge regarding Abralia veranyi, from whatever 

 aspect, is to be found in this paper, and in the monograph of 

 Pfeffer, although there is some information to be had from an 

 older paper by Steenstrup ('80) and another by Joubin ('95), 

 where the luminous organs of some specimens from Nice which 

 are probably referable to this species are described under the 

 name Abralia Oweni. 



It is of interest to remember that of the seven described species 

 of Abralia, A. veranyi as at present understood is the only 



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