1916 Pomona Journal of Entomology and Zoology, Vol. VUI, No. 1, Mar. 



The Octopod Ocythoe in California 



S. S. BERRY 



In the course of my review of the West American cephalopods 

 published a few years ago (Bulletin Bureau Fisheries, v. 30, p. 

 275), T wrote of a well known group of pelagic Octopoda as fol- 

 lows : 



"No other group at all approaches Argonauta in its assemblage 

 of utterly distinctive characters, the nearest being the genera 

 Ocythoe and Tremoctopiis, which are not known to be represented in 

 our waters." 



That Ocythoe, at least, is a member of our fauna, I have long 

 suspected, partly because of a specimen which was exhibited in one 

 of the Los Angeles curio stores some years since, but ignorantly held 

 at so inflated a figure, that it could not be obtained even for one of 

 the university museums, and another without label, but thought to 

 be from Southern California, which is now in the collection of the 

 State University at Berkeley. A further bit of evidence, which to 

 me savors strongly of this same animal, lies in a paragraph by the 

 late Dr. C. F. Holder with regard to a specimen obtained by him 

 at Avalon (Scientific American, October 16, 1909, p. 283). He 

 wrote : 



"It is given in all the textbooks, I believe, that the male of the 

 argonaut is a minute animal hardly an inch long. This cannot be 

 so in all species. I have a male which has a radiant spread of eight 

 or nine inches, and is as large as the female. . . . The male 

 of this species is large, and might readily be taken for an octopus, 

 having its habits." 



As a male Argouauta answering such a description as this would 

 be a sheer absurdity, the lines quoted served at first to occasion me 

 no little perplexity. Surely, however, the suggestion that Holder's 

 specimen was a female Ocythoe and not an Argouauta at all, seems 

 not only possible, but plausible. 



These cases are all strong indications that Ocythoe belongs to our 

 fauna but, in view of the obvious uncertainty attending each, no 

 formal record of the fact has yet found its way into print. 



