294 ZALOPHUS CALiFORNIANUS CALIFORNIAN SEA LION. 



FOtaria australis et de ceux de POtarie de Steller, tires de nos 

 individus du Japon. Le Musee des Pays-Bas enfin vieut de 

 recevoir, comine nous 1'avons constate plus haut, un tres jeuno 

 iudividu d'une Otarie, prise sur leg iles Houtman pres de la 

 cote occideutale de la Nouvelle Hollande, et qui ne parait differer 

 ni de 1'Otarie australe de Quoy et Gaimard, ni du Lion inarm de 

 Steller. II parait resulter de ces donnees que 1'Otarie de Steller 

 n'habite pas seulernent le uord de Focean pacifique, niais qu'elle 

 se trouve aussi dans les parties australes de cette mer."* It 

 appears to me probable that if we change the phrase "1'Otarie 

 de Steller" in the last sentences above quoted to read Zalo- 

 plius lobatus, we have the case correctly stated.t Indeed, Gray, 

 in his earlier papers (down to 1866), positively referred the 

 Otaria stelleri of Teinminck to his ArctocepJiahis lobatus. Later $ 

 he says it "includes both the Australian Eared Seals, viz, 

 Arctoceplialm clnereus and Neoplioca loba ta? but finally doubt- 



*Faun. Jap., Mam. Marius, p. 8. 



t. Just what Tenmiinck's young skulls referred to Otaria stelleri are seems 

 not so clear, they Laving six superior molars on each side. As elsewhere 

 stated, I have found supernumerary molars in about one skull in ten in adult 

 specimens .of Zalophiis californianus, and occasionally in other species of 

 Eared Seals, but Temminck describes all his four young skulls as having 

 each six superior molars on each side, or alveoli indicating their recent 

 presence, but the probabilities are entirely against the sixth being super- 

 numerary. In referring to his" Otaria ste/to'i,"he says: "la sixieme molaire 

 de la machoire superieure est sujette a tomber al'e"poque de 1'apparition des 

 dents permanents," and gives this as one of the characters which distin- 

 guish it from 0. julata. What he had before him is hard to recognize, for 

 the skulls he described had long passed the age when all traces of the tem- 

 porary dentition are lost. It is only supposable that the young skulls be- 

 longed to some six-molared species ; for no species of Otary is known to 

 lose at any stage the hinder pair of upper permanent molars, and thus 

 undergo a change in the dental formula from M. |^-.- to M. 4-^| At one 

 time (Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool., vol. ii, p. 62) I thought it probable that the 

 young skull here figured (as well as the other young skulls Temmiuck de- 

 scribes) might have been that of CallorJiinus ursimis, but the form of the 

 nasals and the frontal extension of the intermaxillaries in the one figured 

 show that such could not have been the case. Dr. Gray at one time re- 

 ferred it without doubt to Arctocephahts cinereus, which is probably its cor- 

 rect allocation, although later he doubtfully assigned it to his Pkocarctos 

 i-lontjaim (Hand-List, 1874, p. 31), but a little further on in the same work 

 (p. 4-2) lie says, "figures 5 and 6 [of Temminck's plate xxii] are evidently 

 (imwopliora," but thinks they may belong to an undescribed species. 



tSuppl. Cat. Seals and Whales, 1871, p. 24. 

 $ Hand-List of Seals, 1876, p. 42. 



