BOTTLE-NOSED DOLPHIN. 467 



VELPHINIDM. 



BOTTLE-NOSED DOLPHIN. 



Delphinus tursio (Fabricius). 



Specific Character. Back black, sides dusky, belly dirty white. Beak 

 short but distinct. Teeth |2;| to :, truncated in age. Rostrum of skull 

 with two ribs above, formed by the convexity of the intermaxillaries ; 

 vertebras 41 ; ribs 13 pairs. Length of adult 8 to 12 feet. t 



Delphinus tursio, FABRICIUS, Fauna Grcenl., 49 (1790). 



,, truncatus, MONTAGU, Mem. Wern. Soc., III., 75 (1821). 



Tursio truncatus, J. E. GRAY, List Mam. Brit. Mus., 104 (1850). 



Tursiops tursio, GERVAIS, Hist. Nat. des Mam., 323 (1855). 



THE Bottle-nosed Dolphin is a much rarer animal than 

 the last described, but appears to have a very similar 

 geographical distribution, extending throughout the 

 temperate regions of the Atlantic from Greenland to the 

 Mediterranean. It seems to occur, though rarely, on the 

 coasts of all the countries of Western Europe. 



In British waters the first recorded occurrence seems to 

 have been that of a female of eleven feet in length, 

 accompanied by a sucker, which were taken near Berkeley, 

 and described by John Hunter in the " Philosophical 

 Transactions " for 1787, under the name of " Bottle- 

 nosed Whale." Another, which was killed in the River 

 Dart in Devonshire in 1814, was described by Col. 

 Montagu as a new species, Delphinus truncatus, in the 

 third volume of the " Memoirs of the Wernerian Society " 

 its skull is still preserved in the British Museum. Since 



