REPORT ON THE CETACEA. 3 



The specimens already put on record which liave been referred to the Mesoplodon 

 layardi are as follows : — 



1. A skull, with lower jaw, from the Cape of Good Hope, presented by Mr E. L. 

 Layard to the British Museum. The skull was described and figured by Dr Gray,' and 

 more fully described and with better figures by Professor Owen.^ 



2. A single tooth from another specimen in the possession of Mr E. L. Layard." It is 

 possible that this is the tooth already referred to as obtained from the skull of specimen 

 A collected by Mr Moseley. 



3. A lower jaw, with teeth, from the Chatham Islands, in the Colonial Museum, Wel- 

 lington, New Zealand, described and figured by Dr Hector as DoUchodon layardii.* 



4. A skeleton in the Sydney Museum, obtained at Little Bay, near Sydney, and named 

 by Mr KrefFt successively Mesoplodon longirostris and gilntheri, and by Dr J. E. Gray 

 Callidon gilntheri.^ 



5. Skeleton from Saltwater Creek, now in the Canterbury Museum, New Zealand, 

 described by Dr von Haast as Mesoplodon Jloweri." From a comparison of a photograph 

 of its skuU with the skull of the Mesoplodon layardi in the British Museum, neither 

 Professor Flower ' nor M. van Beneden could recognise any specific differences between the 

 crania, so that they regard them as of the same species. 



The geographical range, therefore, of Layard's Mesoplodon is very extensive. From 

 the Cape of Good Hope, where it was first discovered, at least three crania, including 

 those collected by the Challenger, have been procured. Other specimens have been 

 obtained, far to the eastward, from the Chatham Islands, New Zealand, and Australia, 

 whilst the discovery of the skeleton of a specimen at the Falkland Islands has extended 

 its habitat considerably to the west. All the localities in which it has been obtained are 

 in the Southern hemisphere, either in the South Atlantic or South Pacific, and there is no 

 knowledge of this Cetacean ever having been seen to the north of the equator. 



The Skull. — That the adidt skuU A, and the lower jaw, beak, and teeth B, from the Cape 

 of Good Hope were specimens of Mesoplodon layardi was unc[uestionab]e, as they agreed 

 in characters with specimens of this animal already described and figured. The skull of the 



1 Proc. Zool. Soc, 1865, p. 358 ; and Catalogue of Seals and Whales, p. 35.3, where it is named Ziphius layardii 

 (DoUchodon). 



2 Memoirs of the Pala;ontographical Society, 1870, in Monograph on the British Fossil Cetacea from the Red Crag. 

 Owen's figures have been reproduced, though reversed in the copying, in pi. xxvii. figs. 1-3, a, of Van Beneden and 

 Gervais' Osteographie des C(5taoes. 



3 Referred to by Professor Flower in his Memoir on the Recent Ziphioid Whales, Trans. Zool. Soc, vol. viii. p. 211. 

 * Trans. New Zealand Institute, vol. v. p. 166, pi. iii. Dr Gray in vol. vi. of these Transactions proposes to call this 



specimen DoUchodon traversii. 



6 Annals and Magazine Natural History, 1871, vol. vii. p. 368. Dr Gray had only a photograph and sketch of 

 the tootli for examination. 



" Notes on Mesoplodon floweri, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, June 6, 1876 ; and Trans. New Zealand Institute, vol. 

 ix. p. 442, 1877. 



" Remarks by Prof Flower upon Dr von Haast's Communication on Mesoplodon floweri, Proc. Zool. Soc. London, 

 June 6, 1876. 



