410 PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL MUSEUM. vol.37. 



Surface everywhere smooth. Color of preserved specimens a dirty 

 buff, heavily dotted and reticulated with blackish chromatophores, 

 which are most numerous on the dorsal surface of the head, but are 

 also scattered thickly over the mantle (both above and below), on the 

 ventral surface of the head and siphon, and at the base of all the arms 

 except the third pair. 



Gladius apparently wanting. 



Total length, excludino; tentacles 38 mm. ; dorsal length of mantle 

 22 mm.; ventral length of mantle 27 mm.; width of mantle near 

 middle 14 mm.; width across fins 32.5 mm. 



The unique type, a gravid female, was dredged in about 733 fath- 

 oms, station 39<S9, coral sanil and rock bottom, in the vicinity of the 

 island of Kauai. 



This form can not, I think, be confounded with any other described 

 species of the Sepiolidse. In the absence of other peculiar characters, 

 the curious shape of the body and the ventral anterior extension of 

 the mantle entirely covering the funnel would by themselves be very 

 distinctive, but, none the less the present form is very closely related 

 to Ileteroteuthis Gray (//. dispar (Riippell) Gray and //. weheri 

 Joubin). The absence of the gladius and the lack of any save the most 

 rudimentary connection between the mantle and the head woidd 

 seem to ally Stephanoteuthis with Idiosepius Steenstrup, and there are 

 other points of resemblance as well. Idiosepius, however, is stated to 

 have no dorsal connective cartilages whatever, is of a very different 

 shape and aspect, and with small, more posterior, fms. According 

 to its external characters, therefore, Stephanoteuthis seems most easily 

 referred to the Sepiolidae, but until an anatomical examination is 

 possible, its exact position must be left unsettled. 



Genus STOLOTEUTHIS Verrill, 1881. 

 STOLOTEUTHIS IRIS, new species. 



Body small, short, stout, laterally much compressed, rounded 

 posteriorly; dorsal width and length about equal and much less than 

 the depth. Mantle smooth, broadly continuous above with the 

 head, from which it is separated only by a rather prominent cuta- 

 neous line or fold; anterior ventral margin produced forward beneath 

 the eyes and far past them to form a broad convex lobe, somewhat 

 as is seen in Verrill' s Nectoteuthis pourtalesii, which almost entirely 

 conceals the funnel and the ventral surface of the head. An inden- 

 tation in the free anterior edge of the lobe permits the tip of the 

 funnel to be seen. The central region of the lobe is sharply differ- 

 entiated from the rest of the mantle surface as a large, slightly raised 

 and flattened, heart-shaped area. 



Fins relatively enormous, subcircular, narrowed at the base; 

 attached considerably above the median horizontal plane of the 



