NATURAL SCIENCES OP PHILADELPHIA. 29 



STAUREMYS SALVINII, Gray. 

 Loc. cit. 



Shell brown ; temple and side of neck pale marbled ; below 



pale, about the size of Claudius severus. 



Haumanchal, Guatemala. 



ON AN EXTINCT WHALE FROM CALIFORNIA. 

 BY PROF. E. D. COPE. 



George Davidson, of the United States Coast Survey, recently- 

 presented the Museum of the Academy of Natural Sciences, the 

 proximal portion of the left ramus of the mandible of a whale- 

 bone whale. The specimen was found in digging a well at San 

 Diego, on the coast, in the southern part of the State, at a depth 

 of seventy-four feet below the surface, July 27th, 1871. 



The angle and condyle are broken from the specimen, and the 

 distal extremity was not preserved. It possessed a coronoid pro- 

 cess, the apex of which has been lost. The inner face is plane, 

 somewhat convex above, behind the basis of the coronoid process. 

 Anteriorly it becomes more convex, the surface turning inwards 

 to the superior and inferior margins. The exterior face is con- 

 vex, so that at the posterior foramen its diameter above the mid- 

 dle is greater than that below the middle. The inferior outline, 

 from be^ow the coronoid process to below the last external fora- 

 men, is straight, not decurved. It is obtuse most of this distance, 

 but becomes narrowed at the anterior point. The superior mar- 

 gin is obtuse anteriorly, narrowed acute for ten inches anterior 

 to the coronoid process ; it is not truncate anteriorly. The internal 

 foramina are large, and form a series below the upper margin, 

 without distinct groove. The external foraminal series termi- 

 nates much anterior to the interior, that is, the last external is 

 opposite the sixth from behind of the inner row. There is no in- 

 ternal Meckelian groove. The Meckelian cavity of the ramus is 

 large behind the coronoid, but small and in the upper part of the 

 ramus at the last exterior foramen. The dental foramen is large 

 and above the base of the Meckelian cavity, to that its inner 

 wall descends to the floor of the latter. Below the base of the 

 1872.] 



