M. ANGUSTIROSTRIS CALIFORNIAN SEA ELEPHANT. 743 



MACBORHINUS ANGUSTIROSTBIS, Gill. 

 Californian Sea Elephant. 



Macrorhinus angmtirostris, GILL, Proc. Essex Inst., v, I860, 13 ; Proc. Chicago 

 Acad. Sci., i, 1866, 33. SCAMMON, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., 

 1869, 63; Marine Mam., 1874, 115, pi. xx, figg. 1, 2. 



Morunga angustirostris, GRAY, Suppl. Cat. Seals and Whales, 1871, 5. 



Sea Elephant, SCAMMON, J. Ross Browne's Resources of the Pacific Slope 

 [App.], 129; Overland Monthly, iii, 112-117, Nov. 1870. 



Elefante marino, of Mexicans and old Californians. 



Elephant Seal ; Sea Elephant, English. 



EXTERNAL CHARACTERS. Color light dull yellowish-brown, 

 varied with gray, rather darker on the back, more yellowish 

 below. Hair very harsh and stiff. The new coat is said to have 

 a slightly bluish cast. Mystacial bristles black, in four to six 

 rows; the longest five to seven inches long; flattened, with 

 waved or beaded edges. A group of bristles over each eye, the 

 largest nearly as thick and as long as any of the mystacial 

 bristles, and two or three on each side of the face, midway be- 

 tween the nose and eye. Extremity of hind flippers deeply 

 emarginate, hairy, without nails. Fore flippers armed with 

 strong nails ; web deeply notched between the fourth and fifth 

 digits, slightly so between the third and fourth, and a slight in- 

 dentation between the second and third. (Description based 

 on three examples from Santa Barbara Island.) 



" The sexes vary much in size, the male being frequently triple 

 the bulk of the female; the oldest of the former will average 

 fourteen to sixteen feet ; the largest we have ever seen measured 

 twenty-two feet from tip to tip." " The adult females average 

 ten feet in length between extremities." Scammon. " Kound 

 the under side of the neck, in the oldest males, the animal ap- 

 pears to undergo a change with age ; the hair falls off, the skin 

 thickens and becomes wrinkled the furrows crossing each other, 

 producing a checkered surface and sometimes the throat is 

 more or less marked with white spots. Its proboscis extends 



partagent", as 1827, instead of 1824, the correct date. He also cites F. Cu- 

 vier's article on "Les Phoques" in the " Dictionnaire des Sciences Natu- 

 relles" as published in tome lix, 1829, although it appeared originally in 

 tome xxix, 1826. The result is a postdating by three years of F. Cuvier's 

 generic and specific names, favoring, as it happens (accidentally or other- 

 wise), several of Gray's names published in " Griffith's Animal Kingdom" 

 in 1827. 



