750 M. ANGUSTIEOSTRIS CALIFORNIAN SEA ELEPHANT. 



the Southern Sea Elephants * differ very little in size, color, or 

 other external features. Captain Scammon gives the average 

 length of the fall-grown male of the northern species as twelve 

 to fourteen feet, and says that the largest he ever measured had 

 a length of twenty-two feet "from tip to tip". P6ron gives the 

 length of the southern species as twenty to twenty-five, and 

 even thirty feet, with a circumference of fifteen to eighteen 

 feet. Anson gives the length as twelve to twenty feet, and the 

 circumference as eight to fifteen feet. Pernety records the total 

 length as twenty-five feet. Scammon gives the length of the 

 young of the northern species, at birth, as four feet ; and P6ron 

 gives four or five feet as the length of the young at birth for 

 the southern species. The skeletons of the two old males of the 

 southern species, already mentioned, allowing for the interver- 

 tebral cartilages that have disappeared in maceration, meas- 

 ure respectively not over fifteen and sixteen feet, adding to 

 which the length of the hind flipper and the proboscis gives a 

 total length, from "tip to tip," of about twenty-one to twenty- 

 two feet. From the foregoing we may infer that the usual 

 difference in size between the two species is not great, the 



* It is liere assumed that the Sea Elephants of the Southern Hemisphere 

 are all referable to a single species, the Phoca leonina of Linn^, 1758, based 

 on the Sea Lion of Lord Anson, which was renamed Phoca elephantina by 

 Molina, in 1782, and again renamed Phoca proboscidea by P^ron, in 1816, and 

 of which Phoca hyroni of Desmarest, and also Phoca ansoni of the same au- 

 thor (the latter species in part only), and the Mirounga patagonica of Gray 

 are synonyms. I am aware, however, that Peters has recently proposed 

 the recognition of four species, namely, Cystophora leonina (^Anson's Sea 

 Lion), C. falklandica ( = Pernety's Sea Lion), C. proboscidea (ex P6ron), and 

 C. kerguelensia (the Sea Elephant of Kerguelen Island). He seems not, how- 

 ever, to have arrived at this course by an examination of an extensive suite 

 of specimens from various localities, as he refers in this connection to only 

 a single old male examj)le from Kerguelen Island. He seems to have been 

 influenced merely by the varying st atements in respect to size and some 

 other features given by Pernety, Anson, and P6ron. His entire presenta- 

 tion of the case is as follows : "Pernety gibt von seinem Seelowen eine lange 

 Mahne, eine Totallange von 25 Fuss und einen Durchmesser der Basis der 

 Eckzahne von 3 Zoll an. Parous See-Elephanten sollen bis 30 Fuss laug und 

 von blaugrauer Farbe sein. Vielleicht siud alle diese Arten verschieden 

 und es wiirde dann der Name C. leonina L. bloss dem Anson'schen Seelowen 

 zu belassen sein, wahrend die C, falklandica, wie man die von Peniety ben- 

 en nen konnte, die C. proboscidea P6ron, die C. angustirostris Gill der nord- 

 lichen Hemisphare und die von Kerguelenland besonderen Arten angehoren 

 wiirdeu. Fiir den letzteren Fall schlage ich vor, diese Art kerguelenais zu 

 benennen" (Monatsb. d. K. P. Akad. Wisseusch. zu BerUn. (185'5, p. 394, 

 footnote). 



