1916.] NATURAL SCIENCES OF PHILADELPHIA. IT) 



cephalopoda of the kermadec islands. 



by s. stillman berry. 



Introduction. 



The Kermadec Islands comprise a small archipelago of volcanic 

 origin, situated in the South Pacific Ocean northeast of New Zealand, 

 to which politically they belong. Being off the beaten path of 

 commerce, they have been rarely visited, and it is only very recently, 

 through the activity of various antipodean investigators, that we arc 

 beginning to gain any extended knowledge of their fauna. 



So far as cephalopods are concerned, the only species of the fauna 

 known until the last year or two are the three octopods which the 

 Challenger dredged from very deep water in the neighborhood in 

 1874, and which were therefore reported upon by Hoyle in 1885- '86. 



In the spring of 1913 the present writer received from Mr. W. R. B. 

 Oliver, of Auckland, a small, but what proved to be a very well- 

 worth-while collection of cephalopods taken on Sunday Island, the 

 most important member of the group, by Mr. Oliver himself, Mr. Tom 

 Iredale, and Mr. R. S. Bell, in 1908 and 1910. At the request of the 

 sender this collection was "worked up" and reported upon in the 

 Transactions of the New Zealand Institute for June, 1914, but owing 

 to certain exigencies of preparing and publishing the paper, it proved 

 impossible to provide illustrations adequate to the material described. 



Some months later and too late to be reported upon simultaneously 

 with the earlier specimens, Mr. Oliver forwarded me another small 

 vial of cephalopods, collected as were some of the most unusual 

 species in the first lot, by Mr. R. S. Bell, in 1910. Being exceedingly 

 anxious to secure additional material of the practically unique 

 Nematolampas regalis and Abraliopsis astrolineata for further investi- 

 gation, I overhauled the new specimens with eagerness. Though in 

 this particular my quest was not fulfilled, the disappointment was 

 more than tempered by finding two species of genera not represented 

 in the first collection. In fact, the collections supplement one another 

 in such an interesting way that a report upon the second necessarily 

 involves a greater or less consideration of the first. The present 

 paper, therefore, is practically a monograph of the cephalopod fauna 



