The Natural History Museum [NHM], London, formerly the British Museum (Natural History) [BM(NH)], is a centre of biological systematic collections having worldwide coverage. The small but significant historical collections of Cephalopoda are rich in type material (41 cuttlefish; 51 squid; 73 octopods) and have recently been transformed by the addition of the extensive Discovery collections and the Malcolm Clarke collection of Cephalopoda collected from Sperm Whales, both having come from the Institute of Oceanographic Sciences. A list of the Cephalopoda type collections has not been published for 150 years and shuld he of value to workers on the systematics of the group.