286 THE VOYAGE OF H.M.S. CHALLENGER. 



• " The animal is nocturnal in its habits. Its gait is exactly like that of a caterpillar, 

 the feet moving in pairs and the body being entirely supported on them. During the 

 day time it is to be found coiled up in hollows in decayed wood." 



The Cetacea. — During the stay of the ship at Cape Town, the skull of an adult Meso- 

 plodon layardi, without the lower jaw, and the end of the rostrum with the corresponding 

 part of the lower jaw and the two mandibular teeth of a second specimen, were collected 

 by Mr. Moseley, and the same gentleman subsequently procured, at the head of Port 

 Sussex, on the west coast of East Falkland Island, the skeleton of a young example of the 

 same animal. At a later stage of the voyage, whilst the ship was in New Zealand, a skull 

 of Ziphius cavirostris and some of the bones of the Humpback and Right Whales of the 

 southern seas were presented by the Colonial Museum, Wellington. These specimens were 

 reported on at some length by Professor Turner, 1 and his Report may be referred to 

 for the anatomical details, including the microscopic structure of the teeth both of 

 Mesoplodon layardi and Mesoplodon sowerbyi. It may be sufficient to state in 

 this place that although a specimen of Mesoplodon layardi had previously been 

 procured at the Cape, and other specimens at the Chatham Islands, New Zealand, and 

 Australia, the discovery of a skeleton in the Falkland Islands, which Professor Turner 

 determined to be an immature example of that Cetacean, has extended the geographical 

 range of this animal considerably to the westward. No specimen has up to this time 

 b een obtained to the north of the equator. 



The skull of the Ziphius cavirostris had been marked Epiodon chathamiensis by the 

 authorities of the Colonial Museum, but the comparison which Professor Turner has made 

 of this skull with an undoubted specimen of Ziphius cavirostris from Shetland, in the Ana- 

 tomical Museum of the University of Edinburgh, has satisfied him that differences do not 

 exist between them sufficient to justify him in classifying them as distinct species. He 

 considers that the present state of knowledge of this Cetacean strengthens the statement 

 which he had made in a memoir on Ziphius cavirostris, pubkshed in 1872 2 that certain 

 exotic as well as European crania, which had up to that time been described, were 

 examples of that species, and that the geographical distribution of this animal is equal to 

 that of the sperm whale. 



The Chitonidw. — Professor A. C. Haddon, who is preparing a short Report on the small 

 collection of Chitons made during the Expedition, has sent the following note : — 



" The number of specimens of Chitons collected by the Challenger Expedition 

 was small, considering the frequency and wide distribution of the group. This is 

 to be accounted for by the fact that the majority of Chitons are strictly littoral in 



1 Report on the Bones of Cetacea, Zool. Chall. Exp., part it., 1880. 



2 Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin., vol. xxvi. pp. 759-780, 1872. 



