98 IJ.S. NATIONAL MUSEUM BULLETIN 234 



that the right ventral arms, rather than the left as is usual in Ahralia, 

 are hectocotyhzed by the presence of a short semicircular flap on the 

 ventral margin of the arm originating at the 15th hook and bordering 

 4 hooks; the flap terminates just distad of the last hook. There are 

 no suckers or hooks beyond the flap and no sign in either specimen of 

 the customary dorsal flap. 



The buccal membrane is very slightly pigmented, having sparsely 

 set large chromatophores. The body of the animal in general is 

 devoid of pigmentation but has sparsely distributed individual chroma- 

 tophores over most of the surface of the head, mantle, and arms. 



Measurements and indices of two males and seven females of 

 Abralia {Abralia) armata Quoy and Gaimard, 1832, from "Ostasien" 

 are: 



Type. — Museum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris. 



Type locality. — Molluccas, near Celebes. 



This species is included here on the basis of a record in de Elera's 

 (1896) systematic catalog of the mollusks of the Philippines. Though 

 this is a doubtful record, it certainly is within the range and therefore 

 should be included in the Philippine fauna. 



As can be seen from the above description, this species poses a 

 problem in the classification of the genus. All the known species have 

 the left ventral arm hectocotylized rather than the right, and if the 

 ink sac does bear a luminous organ, the two characters alone separate 

 this species clearly. A. armata might be considered to belong to a 

 separate genus from the others, but it seems more reasonable, in the 

 present stage of our Imowledge of the group, to place it in a separate 

 subgenus alone, Abralia {Abralia) armata. 



Distribution.^ — ^Moluccas (Quoy and Gaimard); Balabac, Phihp- 

 pines (de Elera); Ostasien (Zoological Musemu, Copenhagen). 



