730 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XVI. 



{From the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1905, Vol. I., Part I.f 



ON DOLPHINS FROM TRAVANCORE. 



By R. Lydekker. 



{Received December 30th. 1904.) 



t (Plate XIII.) 



For some years past all specimens of Dolphins stranded on the shore 

 or caught by the fishermen in their nets in the neighbourhood of Tre- 

 vandrum, Travancore, have been collected and preserved by the officials 

 of the Trevandrum Museum. This excellent work was begun by the late 

 Director, Mr. Harald Ferguson, and, I am glad to say, is being continued 

 by his successor, Major F. W. Dawson. In most cases careful measurements 

 have been taken of the specimens in the flesh, while excellent coloured sketches 

 have been made of the more important examples by Mr. C. S. Mudaliar, 

 •After the completion of the measurements and drawings, the skeletons have been 

 prepared — some of them, I am glad to say, having been presented to the British 

 Museum. 



As the result of the drawings and specimens sent to mo by Mr. Ferguson, 

 I have (in addition to representatives of other genera) been enabled to deter- 

 mine two apparently distinct species of the genus Tursiops, of both of which 

 coloured figures have been published in the " Journal of the Bombay Natural 

 History Society •"* To the one I gave the name T.fergusoni ; while the second 

 I identified provisionally with the Australian T. catulunia. Since the publica- 

 tion of the second of the papers just referred to, I have received from Trevan- 

 drum sketches of two other Dolphins taken off that coast. The first of these 

 (Plate XIII, Fig. 1) is one of a pair taken in the autumn of 1903 ; while the 

 second (Plate XIII, Fig. 2) was captured in October 1904. Curiously enough, 

 both appear to belong to the genus Tursiops ; and, what is more curious still, 

 they are unlike either of the two specimens figured in the papers referred to 

 above. 



Regarding the specimen taken in 1903, Mr. Ferguson wrote to me as follows : — 



" I sent off last week a case containing the skeletons of two Dolphins caught 

 here lately. They are of the same species, and I think of the genus Tursiops. 

 They are very closely allied to, if not identical with, T. catalania ; but they have 

 no blotches at the sides, and they have a dark blue band running from the eye 

 to the front of the adipose elevation, as in the common Dolphin. This band 

 is much less conspicuous in the larger and older specimen, and may possibly 

 disappear altogether with age. I send measurements of the two specimens, 

 and a sketch of the larger one, in which the blue line is only faintly shown." 



* Vol. XV., pp. 41 and 408, plates B. and C. Jt may be noticed that in the second of these 

 papers no references are made to the first; this is owing to the fact that copies of the 

 former hid not been received in Englar d at the time the latter was written. 



t This Plate has not been reproduced but will be found in the Proceedings of the Zoolo- 

 gical Society of London, Vol. I., Part I, 1905. 



