On some Japanese Cephalopods. 351 



XXXI. — Notes on some Japanese Cephalopods. — A Review of 

 Sasaki's 'Albatross' Report*. By S. Stillman BerrY, 

 Redlaiids, California. 



The important collection of Cephalopods obtained by tiie 

 ' Albatross ' in the North-western Pacific in 1906, originally 

 in the hands of Piof. S. Watase for study, was by iiiin 

 tiu-ned over to Prof. Sasaki, from whose pen now comes the 

 present welcome paper. 



Altliough the unfortunate brevity of many sections would 

 not ordinarily so indicate, this evidently constitutes the long- 

 awaited final report on the collection. Tlie author is under- 

 stood to be engaged upon a monographic survey of the 

 cephalopods of Japan, in course of which it is but fair to 

 suppose that he intends to elucidate the characters of the 

 species concerned in much greater detail. Be that as it may, 

 tlie forty and odd pages of the ' Albatross ' report record a 

 collection of sixty species (an astounding number of tliese 

 animals for so narrowly delimited a region, and one which 

 could probably be duplicated by similar expenditure of time 

 and energy nowhere else in the world, unless in some of the 

 little-known areas of the South Pacific), apportionable among 

 twenty-nine genera. Of these no less than eighteen species, 

 two subspecies or varieties, and two genera are described as 

 new. Watasella, the first of the new genera, is based upon 

 an extraordinary cirroteuthid, in which a " tubular poucii," 

 enclosing a curious filamentous organ, " exists between the 

 first and second arms on eitiier side, running radially through 

 the umbrella, and opening externally on the umbrella edge." 

 Although the significance of such an arrangement can hardly 

 be guessed at from the scanty information given, it seems to 

 the reviewer that the creation of a new family principally on 

 this basis, as Sasaki seems to have done, is possibly prema- 

 ture. The conservative and more fundamental features of 

 the Cirroteuthoidea are so much more impressive than their 

 divergencies that there is certainly ground for the feeling 

 that their relationships are better expressed by the inclusion 

 of all within the confines of a single family than by the sepa- 

 ration into two or more families on the ground of purely 

 adaptive characters, such as the presence or absence of an 

 odontophore, the width of the pallial aperture, the compression 

 of the body, and so on, as has been attempted in various 



* " Report on Cephalopods collected during 1906 by the United States 

 Bureau of Fisheries steamer ' Albatross ' in the North-western Pacific." 

 By Madoka Sasaki. (Proceedings United States National Museum, 

 vol. 57, pp. 163-203, pis. 23-26, 1920.) 



