410 Mr. J- E. Gray on Hyperoodon latifrons. 



Auy one reading the above would suspect that I had made a 

 careless misstatement. The following is the only observation I 

 had made on the subject : " The skull was preserved in Mr. 

 Sowerby's Museum in Mead Place, and when distributed at his 

 death Mr. James Sowerby informed me it was purchased by the 

 Rev. Dr. Buckland, the Dean of Westminster, and sent to one of 

 the museums in Oxford. I have examined these collections with 

 Mr. Hugh Strickland, but have not been able to discover it." 

 (Zool. Erebus and Terror, p. 27.) The interest which I had excited 

 by my visit caused the skull to be looked for, and some time after I 

 received through the kindness of Dr. Acland, the Curator of one of 

 these Museums, the skull in question, with permission to describe 

 it ; and he, seeing the importance of it to zoology, had casts made 

 of the skull and sent them to the English and Foreign museums. 

 I and all other zoologists cannot but be much obliged to Dr. Acland 

 for the trouble he took to find the skull, and the liberal manner 

 in which he has distributed the casts ; but I believe that if it had 

 not been for the information which I had obtained by searching up 

 all the documents connected with the specimen from Mr. Sowerby 

 and M. De Blainville, the skull in question would have been 

 most probably hidden from science until the present time, and 

 perhaps eventually lost j for when Mr. Strickland, Mr. Duncan, 

 Dr. Melville (the Assistant Curator), and I searched for it in the 

 two Oxford Museums, both in the collection and in the store- 

 room, we could not discover, and nobody recollected ever having 

 seen such a specimen. 



But in the Catalogue of Cetacea before referred to, printed 

 and sent to Professor Eschricht before his observation was 

 made, I had altered the above-quoted note in the Zoology 

 of the Erebus and Terror, thus : " * * and sent to the Anato- 

 mical Museum in Oxford, from whence Dr. Acland kindly sent 

 it me for examination/' p. 72. 



Thirdly. Professor Eschricht in several papers objects to my 

 having placed the genera Inia and Platanista in the same group 

 called Platanistina, though he allows they are nearly allied : this 

 is entirely a mistake ; I have never so placed them. Both in the 

 Essay on the Cetacea in the Zoology of the Erebus and Terror, 

 pp. 25 and 45, and in the Catalogue of Cetacea, pp. 135, 136, 

 which may be regarded as a second edition of the same Essay, 

 each genus is considered as the type of a separate tribe called 

 Iniina and Platanistina. 



