42 

 i 



The flippers, mostly the hinder, are anteriorly bordered by irregular 

 black-grey markings, disposed transversely. 



The Newcastle specimen, according to Mr. Angas, is seven feet ten 

 inches in length, and in colouring faintly resembles the foregoing, but 

 the neck and sides contain many distinct oblong black spots. 



To these observations I may add that the specimen taken on the 

 beach at Double Bay, within the harbour of Port Jackson, and which 

 was kept alive for several days, on the grounds of the Museum, had the 

 muzzle lengthened ; the neck comparatively thin and long ; and the 

 girth of the body largest at the fore-flippers, which were placed some- 

 what in advance of half the entire ledgth of the stretched out animal. 



This species of Seal is by no means an infrequent visitor of the 

 coasts of New South Wales and of New Zealand, but evidently only as 

 a wanderer driven by untoward circumstances far away from home. 

 No important details are recorded of its habits, further than that it is a 

 resident of the colder portions of the Southern Seas, and that its 

 capture is not carried on as an object of commercial enterprise. 



Dr. George Bennett and Dr. Knox, however, give a few interesting 

 particulars of the diet of this creature, when forced as an outcast to 

 seek an existence on foreign feeding-grounds. The former, in his 

 " Gatherings of a Naturalist in Australasia," p. 167, says, in allusion 

 to the large male before described, that " it was killed in the fresh 

 water of Shoalhaveu River, in August, 1859, several miles above the 

 influence of the salt water, and when opened had an entire water-mole in 

 its stomach, minus the head." The latter observes of a New Zealand 

 specimen, that " the stomach contained numerous fish-bones, a few 

 feathers (gulls'), and some considerable portions of a pale-green broad- 

 leaved marine fucus." 



STBNOEHTNCHYS WEDDELLII, Lesson. False Sea Leopard of Gray. 



Synonyms Leptonyx Weddellii, Gray. B.M.C., 1866, p 12. 



Leopard Seal (?) Jardine's Nat. Libr., p. 1S3, pi. 12. 

 Small-nailed Seal (?) p. 180, pi. 11. 



I derive the following extracts of the description of this species (the 

 only one of Dr. Gray's genus leptonyx) from the British Museum Cata- 

 logue ; putting the more salient points of distinction between it and 

 Stenorhynchus leptonyx into italics, for the guidance of the student. 

 "Lower jaw weak, with an obtuse angle behind ; orbits very large" ; head 

 flattened ; muzzle broad, rather short, rounded ; muzzb hairy between 

 and to the edge of the nostrils ; nostrils ovate ; whiskers compressed, 

 slightly waved; ears, no external conch; skull slightly depressed, 

 expanded behind ; nose rather short, broad, high above ; orbits, rather 

 large ; the petrose portion of the temporal bone convex, hemis- 

 pherical. Lower jaw slender, with a short symphysis in front, and 

 narrow, without any angle at the hinder part of the lower edge. The skull 

 of this genus Leptonyx resembles in many respects Cuvier's figure of a 



