8 EDWARD A. WILSON. 



Weddell's Seals are by no means so liberally scarred by the Killer's teeth as 

 are the Crab-eaters, and this results from the fact that they remain almost always some 

 miles on the safer side of the ice-edge, and as far as possible from the open water. 

 Here they are comfortably clear of the Killer Whales, which keep to the breaking 

 edge of the fast ice, and the more or less open water of the pack. 



The Killer is heard to blow, and the spout is seen before the snout comes 

 out of the water. They are generally moving at a rapid rate, and, as a rule, the 

 whole head and back and dorsal fin come clear out of the water, after blowing, at 

 every rise. They have the same habit of swimming in close proximity side by side 

 that we have noticed also in the Eorqual. They may be travelling at a very fast rate, 

 yet the pace is so uniform in each individual that they may appear fastened one 

 to the other, each half a length in advance of its companion ; constantly appearing and 

 disappearing in this manner they give the idea of a single animal with two dorsal 

 fins, unless indeed they are so close that they can be separately distinguished. I 

 cannot say what is the meaning of this habit either in the Rorqual or the Killer, but 

 perhaps the young and the mother thus find an easy way of avoiding separation 

 whilst making a passage from one district to another. 



The rano-e of the Orca in the South, as we ourselves observed it, lies between 

 S. lat. 30° in W. long. 30°, where the northernmost examples were found, and S. lat. 78° 

 in E. long. 170° where we saw hundreds at the farthest point of open water to the 

 South. But if, as seems to be the case, the Southern form is identical with the Northern, 

 the range of Orca gladiator must be considered universal. That the Southern form is 

 identical with the Northern appears evident from Sir James Hector's mention of two 

 examples which were obtained in New Zealand, the first of which ran ashore in 

 Lyell's Bay, while the second, which he says appears to be a fully adult example 

 of Orca gladiator, was cast up on the beach at Wanganui. (Proc. Wellington Phil. 

 Soc. 1880.) 



It has been reported also from the Seychelles (4° to 5° S. lat.), from the Cape of Good 

 Hope, from the Northern Pacific, and from the English coast ; and if further testimony 

 is wanted as to its ubiquity, it is to be found in Mr. Bennett's words : — " Whales thus 

 designated appeared to us in small bands, and chiefly in the vicinity of the equator. 



" ^ 



LAGENORHYNCHUS OBSCURUS. 



The Dusky Dolphin. 



Delphinus obscurus, Gray, Spic. Zool. (182s), p. 2. 



Lagenorhijnchus obscurus, Blanford, Mamm. Brit. India (1888), p. 580, ibique citata.l^ 



We saw the Dusky Dolphin {Lagenorhynchus obscurus), a well-known and 

 unmistakable form, day after day playing round the ship in the Southern ocean. 

 We saw also an allied and hitherto unrecognised species of equally characteristic 



* Bennett, " Whaling Voyage Round the Globe," 1833 to 1836, ii., p. 289. 

 I The date of Mr. True's paper is 1889. 



