292 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. [82] 



The male has one of the ventral .arms (which may he either right or 

 left in our species) hectocotylized near the tip, by an enlargement and 

 flattening of the bases of the sucker-stalks, while their cups become small 

 or abortive. 



The female has oviducts developed on both sides, but they are small 

 and simple, opening below the bases of the gills. Two symmetrical nida- 

 mental glands, which are comparatively small and simple in our species, 

 are situated behind the heart. 



Professor Steenstrnp, in the paper last quoted in the above synonymy, 

 has given a revision of the Oininastrephes group. He divides the old 

 genus Ommastrephes into three genera, viz: I. Illex, which includes 

 O. illecebrosuSj with 0. Coindetii, the closely allied Mediterranean form; 

 II. Todaeodes, which includes only the well-known Ommastrephes to- 

 darns of the Mediterranean, to which he restores the name sagittatus 

 Lamarck, which has been otherwise employed by other authors during 

 half a century past ; III. Ommatostrephes (restricted), which corre- 

 sponds exactly with Sthenotenthis, established by me in a paper pub- 

 lished several months earlier. (Trans. Conn. Acad., v, p. 222, Febru- 

 ary, 1880.) In another part of his article he refers to my paper, which 

 had been promptly sent to him, but he makes no reference whatever to 

 the genus Sthenoteuthis, nor to the species S. megaptera, which, as a spe- 

 cies, had been described by me still earlier (1878) and in far greater de- 

 tail than most of the other species which he mentions, and which should, 

 under his system of classification , bear the name of Ommastrephes me- 

 gaptera. Nor does he point out any new characters for distinguishing 

 this generic group other than those first given by me, viz, the presence 

 of connective suckers and tubercles on the tentacular arms, proximal to 

 the club, and the great development of the membranes on the lateral 

 arms. Under the ordinary rule of nomenclature, by which the first cor- 

 rect subdivision made in an older genus shall be entitled to priority, 

 while the original name shall be retained for the remaining group, the 

 name Sthenotcuthis ought to be maintained for the division first estab- 

 lished by me, while Ommastrephes (restricted) should be retained for a 

 part or all of the remaining species. 



While I very much regret this confusion of names, I perceive no way 

 to remedy it except by the application of the usual rules of priority. I 

 can certainly see no necessity for the imposition of new names when 

 others ecpially good were already provided. As for the distinction be- 

 tween lllex and Todarodes, it seems to me very slight and scarcely of 

 generic importance. Illex is characterized by having eight rows of 

 small suckers on the distal part of the club and a smooth siphonal 

 groove. Todarodes is characterized by having four rows of distal suck- 

 ers and some small grooves or furrows at the anterior end of the siphonal 

 groove. 



But I have a species (which I refer to 0. Sloanei Gray) from Tasma- 

 nia which agrees with Illex in having a smooth siphonal groove, but 



