Cephalopoda of the Kermadec Islands

Abstract

The Kermadec Islands comprise a small archipelago of volcanic origin, situated in the South Pacific Ocean northeast of New Zealand, to which politically they belong.Being off the beaten path of commerce, they have been rarely visited, and it is only very recently, through the activity of various antipodean investigators, that we are beginning to gain any extended knowledge of their fauna.So far as cephalopods are concerned, the only species of the fauna known until the last year or two are the three octopods which the Challenger dredged from very deep water in the neighborhood in 1874, and which were therefore reported upon by Hoyle in 1885-'86.In the spring of 1913 the present writer received from Mr. W. R. B. Oliver, of Auckland, a small, but what proved to be a very wellworth-while collection of cephalopods taken on Sunday Island, the most important member of the group, by Mr.