750 M. ANGUSTIROSTRIS CALIFORNIAN SEA ELEPHANT. 



the Southern Sea Elephants* differ very little in size, color, or 

 other external features. Captain Scammon gives the average 

 length of the full-grown male of the northern species as twelve 

 to fourteen feet, and says that the largest he ever measured had 

 a length of twenty-two feet " from tip to tip". Pe"ron gives the 

 length of the southern species as twenty to twenty-five, and 

 even thirty feet, with a circumference of fifteen to eighteen 

 feet. Anson gives the length as twelve to twenty feet, and the 

 circumference as eight to fifteen feet. Pernety records the total 

 length as twenty-five feet. Scanirnon gives the length of the 

 young of the northern species, at birth, as four feet ; and Pe"ron 

 gives four or five feet as the length of the young at birth for 

 the southern species. The skeletons of the two old males of the 

 southern species, already mentioned, allowing for the interver- 

 tebral cartilages that have disappeared in maceration, meas- 

 ure respectively not over fifteen and sixteen feet, adding to 

 which the length of the hind flipper and the proboscis gives a 

 total length, from "tip to tip," of about twenty^one to twenty- 

 two feet. From the foregoing we may infer that the usual 

 difference in size between the two species is not great, the 



* It is here assumed that the Sea Elephants of the Southern Hemisphere 

 are all referable to a single species, the Phoca leonina of Linne", 1758, based 

 on the Sea Lion of Lord Anson, which was renamed Phoca elephantina by 

 Molina, in 1782, and again renamed Phoca proboscidea by Pe"ron, in 1816, and 

 of which Phoca byr&ni of Desmarest, and also Phoca ansoni of the same au- 

 thor (the latter species in part only), and the Mirounga patagonioa of Gray 

 are synonyms. I am aware, however, that Peters has recently proposed 

 the recognition of four species, namely, Ci/stophora leonina ( = Anson's Sea 

 Lion), C. falklandica ( = Pernety's Sea Lion), C. proboscidea (ox PeYon), and 

 C. kergueleiisis (the Sea Elephant of Kergueleu Island). He seems not, how- 

 ever, to have arrived at this course by an examination of an extensive suite 

 of specimens from various localities, as he refers in this connection to only 

 a single old male example from Kerguelen Island. He seems to have been 

 influenced merely by the varying statements in respect to size and some 

 other features given by Pernety, Anson, and Pe"ron. His entire presenta- 

 tion of the case is as follows : " Pernety gibt von seinem Seelowen eine lange 

 Mahne, eine Totallange von 25 Fuss und einen Durchmesser der Basis der 

 Eckzahne von 3 Zoll an. Pe"rons See-Elephanten sollen bis 30 Fuss lang und 

 von blaugrauer Farbe sein. Vielleicht siud alle diese Arten verschieden 

 und es wiirde dann der Name C. leonina L. bloss dern Anson'schen Seelowen 

 zu belassen sein, wahrend die C. falklandica, wie man die von Pernety ben- 

 ennen konnte, die C. proboscidea Pe"ron, die C. angustirostris Gill der nord- 

 lichen Hemisphere und die von Kerguelenland besonderen Arten angehoren 

 warden. Fur den letzteren Fall schlage ich vor, diese Art kerguelensis zu 

 benenuen" (Monatsb. d. K. P. Akad. Wissensch. zu Berlin. (1875, p. 394, 

 footnote). 



