294 ZALOPHUS CALiFORNIANUS CALIFORNIAN SEA LION. 



I'Otaria australis ct de ceux de I'Otarie de Steller, tires de nos 

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

 recevoir, comuie nous I'avons constate plus haut, un tres-jeuno 

 individu d'une Otarie, prise sur les iles Houtman i)res de la 

 cote occidentale de la IJ^ouvelle Hollande, et qui ne parait differer 

 ni de I'Otarie australe de Quoy et Gaimard, ni du Lion marin de 

 Steller. II parait resulter de ces donnees que TOtarie de Steller 

 n'habite pas seulement le nord de I'ocean pacifique, mais qu'elle 

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

 appears to me irobable that if we change the phrase "I'Otarie 

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

 phus lohatus, 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 Arctocephalns lohatus. Later | 

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

 ArctocepJialus cinereus and WeopJwca 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 Zaloplms californianus, and occasionally in other species of 

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

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

 I)resence, 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 su]i6rieure est sujette atomber al'^poque de I'apparition des 

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

 guish it from O. juhata. What he had before him is hard to recognize, for 

 the skulls he described had long passed Ihe 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 sjiecies ; for no si^ecies of Otary is known to 

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



undergo a change in the dental formula from M. ^^i^ to M. ^szA . At one 

 *=> '^ 5 5 5 5 



time (Bull. Mas. Comp. Zool., vol. ii, p. G2) I thought it probable that the 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 elongatus (Hand-List, 1S74, 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 

 Gt/psophoca," l)ut thinks they may belong to an undescribed species. 



tSuppl. Cat. Seals and Whales, 1871, p. 24. 



^ Hand-List of Seals, 1B7G, p. 42. 



