294 ZALOPHUS CALIFORNIANUS CALIFORNIAN SEA LION. 



POtaria australis et de ceux de POtarie de Steller, tires de nos 

 individus du Japon. Le Musee des Pays-Bas enfin vient de 

 recevoir, comme nous Pavons constate plus haut, un tres-jeuno 

 individu d'une Otarie, prise sur les lies Houtman pres de la 

 cote occidentale de la Nouvelle Hollande, et qiii ne parait differer 

 ni de POtarie australe de Quoy et Gaimard, ni du Lion marin de 

 Steller. II parait resulter de ces donne'es que POtarie de Steller 

 n'habite pas seulement le nord de*Pocean pacifique, mais qu'elle 

 se trouve aussi dans les parties australes de cette mer."* It 

 appears to ine probable that if we change the phrase "POtarie 

 de Steller" in the last sentences above quoted to read Zalo- 

 pJius lobatus, we have the case correctly stated.t Indeed, Gray, 

 in his earlier papers (down to 1866), positively referred the 

 Otaria stelleri of Temminck to his ArctocepJialus lobatus. Later J 

 he says it "includes both the Australian Eared Seals, viz, 

 ArctocepJialus cinereus and Neophoca lobata? but finally doubt- 



*Faun. Jap., Mam. Marins, p. 8. 



t Just what Temminck's young skulls referred to Otaria stelleri are seems 

 not so clear, they having six superior molars on each side. As elsewhere 

 stated, I have found supernumerary molars in about one skull in ten in adult 

 specimens of Zalophm californianus, and occasionally in other species of 

 Eared Seals, but Temminck describes all his four young skulls as having 

 each six superior molars on each side, or alveoli indicating their recent 

 presence, but the probabilities are entirely against the sixth being super- 

 numerary. In referring to his" Otaria stelleri, " he says : " la sixieme molaire 

 de la machoire supe"rieure est sujette atomber a.l'e'poque de Fapparitioii des 

 dents permanents," and gives this as one of the characters which distin- 

 guish it from 0. jubata. What he had before him is hard to recognize, for 

 the skulls he described had long passed the age when all traces of the tem- 

 porary dentition are lost. It is only supposable that the young skulls be- 

 longed to some six-molared species ; for no species of Otary is known to 

 lose at any stage the hinder pair of upper permanent molars, and thus 



undergo a change in the dental formula from M. _^L- 6 - to M. ^^ . At oner 



5 5 5 5 



time (Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool., vol.ii, p. 62) I thought it probable that the 



young skull here figured (as well as the other young skulls Temminck de- 

 scribes) might have been that of CallorUnus ursinus, but the form of the 

 nasals and the frontal extension of the intermaxillaries in the one figured 

 show that such could not have been the case. Dr. Gray at one time re- 

 ferred it without doubt to Arctocephalus cinereus, which is probably its cor- 

 rect allocation, although later he doubtfully assigned it to his Phocarctoz 

 elongatus (Hand-List, 1874, p. 31), but a little further on in the same work 

 (p. 42) he says,- "figures 5 and 6 [of Temminck's plate xxii] are evidently 

 Gypsophoca," but thinks they may belong to an undescribed species. 



t Suppl. Cat. Seals and Whales, 1871, p. 24. 



Hand-List of Seals, 1876, p. 42. 



