84 THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGES. 



Arctocephalus piisillus (Schreber). Fur-Seal of Cape of Good Hope and of Crozet 



Islands. 



Phoca pusilla, Schreber, Die Saugthiere, iii. p. 314, pi. lxxxv., 1778. 



,, antarctica, Thunberg, Mem. Acad. St. Petersb., iii. p. 222, 1811. 

 Arctocephalus Delalandii, Gray, Brit. Mus. Catal., p. 52, 18G6. 

 Otaria pusilla, Peters, Monatsber. d. k. preuss. Akad. d. Wiss. Berlin, May 17, 1866, p. 271, 1867. 



To this Seal the specific name Arctocephalus delalandii was applied by Dr. Gray, 

 who has given the following description of the skull in the British Museum. Hinder 

 aperture of palate narrow, with a rather acute, ovate anterior edge, surface of palate 

 concave ; facial part of skull rather short, forehead flattened from nasal bone to vertex ; 

 teeth large ; lower jaw rather short, strong. Further, he says that the hair is rigid, 

 the under-fur small in quantity, reddish-brown. 



I have also examined this specimen. It is obviously an aged male, for the occipital 

 and sagittal crests are strong, a parietal tubercle projects immediately in front of the 

 occipital crest, the two nasals are ankylosed together, and the teeth are worn and 

 broken. The extreme length of the skull is 280 mm., its interzygomatic width is 177 

 mm., and its width behind the meatus 174 mm. It measures 51 mm. from the front 

 of the cranial box to the posterior border of the postorbital process, and 137 mm. 

 from the same border to the premaxillary tubercle. The mastoids are powerful and 

 project downwards and outwards ; tympanic roughened and with shallow ridges 

 projecting vertically. The post-canines though injured are obviously not so large as 

 in Eumctopias hookeri. Mandible with a faint angle and with a subcondyloid process 

 vertically elongated and not flattened from before backwards. The length-breadth 

 index calculated on the interzygomatic width is 63, and on the width behind the 

 meatus 62. 



Several years ago I described the cranium of an Eared Seal in the Anatomical Museum 

 of the University of Edinburgh, which had been obtained from the Cape of Good Hope. 1 

 I regarded it as a distinct species, and, owing to a mesial cleft in the palate between the 

 two palate bones, named it Arctocephalus schisthyperoes. The skull was 8'1 inches 

 (206 mm.) long, 5"1 inches (130 mm.) broad between the zygomatic arches, and 

 4'3 inches (109 mm.) immediately behind the external meatus. Although the teeth 

 were but little worn, yet the basicranial synchondroses were ossified, and the cranial 

 sutures had almost disappeared, so that I regarded the skull as an adult but not 

 aged. 



Dr. Gray criticised my description of this skull 2 and stated that it was evidentl) 7 the 

 skull of a half-grown animal with the sutures apparent ; he believed the cleft palate to 



1 Journ. of Anal, and Phys., November 1868, vol. iii. 



2 Ann. and Mag. Nat, Hist, vol. iv., 1869, p. 264. 



