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BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES 
the mouth of the Bay of Fundy (date unknown), and others of 16 to 19 centimeters, 
taken off Shelburne, Nova Scotia, in July, 1921. 58 Very likely its eggs are pelagic, 
as are those of some of its relatives, but it is certain that they do not occur regularly 
among the plankton of the Gulf of Maine, pelagic squid eggs (at least such as I have 
seen in the West Indies) being very easily recognized at all but the very earliest stages 
by the characteristic embryo. 
In European waters Illex illecehrosa is replaced by the form I. coindeii, so closely 
allied that Pfeffer (1912) regards the difference between them as no more than 
subspecific. 7. coindeti ranges from Scottish waters to the Mediterranean. 
No squids other than Loligo and Illex have ever been found in any numbers in the 
Gulf of Maine, nor is it likely that any other species are ever numerically important 
in its pelagic fauna, with the possible exception of the boreal-arctic Gonatus fabricii. 
There is only one actual record of this species from the Gulf, a single specimen taken 
from the stomach of a cod near Seal Island, off Cape Sable (Johnson, 1915) ; but since 
its larvtc have been taken at several localities between Newfoundland and Ireland, 
once, even, close to the southern edge of the Grand Banks (Hjort, 1912), the adult 
(which resembles Illex so closely that it might well be overlooked among the shoals of 
the latter) maybe more common along the coasts of Nova Scotia and even in the 
Gulf of Maine than the paucity of actual records suggests. Finally, we may note 
that no “ giant squids” seem ever to have been found in the Gulf of Maine. 
Pteropods 
Limacina retroversa Fleming 59 / 
This shelled pteropod, a boreal form known from latitude about 50° to northern 
Norway, off the European coast, and from latitude about 34° to the southern part 
of Davis Strait, in the western Atlantic, is one of the most characteristic of the 
permanent pelagic inhabitants of the Gulf of Maine, where its numbers depend on 
local reproduction and not on immigration from elsewhere. It is the only pteropod 
of which this can confidently be asserted. Although it has now been taken in all 
parts of the gulf at one season or another, it is, as I have previously pointed out (p. 45 ; 
Bigelow, 1917, p. 299), far less regular in its occurrence in the gulf than certain 
of the calanoid copepods, the amphipod genus Euthemisto, or Sagitta elegans. 
It has commonly been our experience to find it comparatively plentiful at one station 
but rare or absent at another hard by. Similarly, waters where the nets yield an 
abundance of Limacina on one visit may prove quite barren of it a few weeks later, 
as was the case in the spring of 1920 on the eastern part of Georges Bank, where large 
Limacina were plentiful on March 11 (station 20065), but were sought in vain on 
April 17 (station 20111). Limacina was present on one cruise and absent on the 
next, or vice versa, at several localities during the season of 1915, notably off Mon- 
hegan and Matinicus Islands and in the northeast corner of the basin of the gulf. 
88 Information supplied by Doctor Huntsman. 
!t I follow Meisenheimer (1905) in uniting under this name the L. retroversa and L. balea of the early malacologists. Eonnevie 
(1912), it is true, has separated the two once more, basing the distinction partly on the shape of the shell (in which character, 
however, her specimens intergraded) and partly oh the structure of the radula; but W. F. Clapp writes that “a careful exami- 
nation of the quantities of Limacina from the Gulf of Maine has shown that it is impossible to consider tho material as belonging 
to more than one species.” 
