GRAMPUS GKISEUS. 



131 



Grampus nakamata Gervais. 



This name was first formally used by Gray in the Zoology of the 

 Voyage of the Erebus and Terror, page 31. It was given to a whale 

 described by Sclilegel from Japanese drawings and uatnriil histories. 

 Schlegel did not see any specimens of the species described, and Gray 

 did not examine the original accounts from which Schlegel drew his 

 description. Certainly we are getting far away from nature in this 

 matter. Fortunately', however, Gervais applied the name to a skull of 

 a grampus received from Japan, and thus for the first time placed the 

 new species, if new species it be, witliin the reach of investigation. 



In considering this skull we ought not to be infiuenced by Schlegel's 

 remarks ou the color, etc., of the animal represented in the Japanese 

 drawings, because that author believed that the cetacean was a species 

 of Killer. Gray's opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, it does not ap- 

 pear probable to me that the author of the concise and well-illustrated 

 description of the Killer in the Ahhandhoujoi would mistake a Grampus 

 for a Killer. I consider the skull figured by Gervais in the Osteogrophie 

 (pi. LXiv, tig. 5, p. 5(!8) as the type of the so called Grampus saJcamata. 



Upon examining this figure, however, we are at once made aware of 

 the iuadvisability of basing species in this genus on the proportions of 

 the skull alone, on account of the great amount of individual variation 

 in cranial characters. Figures 4a ud 5 on plate LXiv of the Osteographie 

 apparently represent skulls distinguishable specifically at a glance. 

 But in the national collection there are two skulls which might almost 

 have served for the basis of these two figures, yet were both obtained 

 from Cape Cod, Massachusetts (together with many others), at the same 

 time, and are almost unquestionably specifically identical. 



We will consider a few of the proportions common to Gervais' skull 

 of G. sal-amata from Japan, and 'No. 224 10 of our collection, from Cape 

 Cod, Massachusetts, and some which are common to the skull of G. griseus 

 from Concarneau, figured on the same plate, and No. 22447 of our collec- 

 tion, from Cape Cod. It should be remarked first, however, that both our 

 skulls and those figured in the Osteographie are from young individuals. 



