BOTTLE-NOSED DOLPHIN. 467 



CETA CEA . DELPIJINID.F.. 



{ODONTOCETI.) 



'-^- 



BOTTLE-NOSED DOLPHIN. 



Delphinus tursio (Fabricius). 



Specific Cliaracter. — Back black, sides dusky, belly dirty white. Beak 

 short but distinct. Teeth 29:|o to |^:|>, truncated in age. Rostrum of skull 

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

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



Delphinus tursio, Fabricius, Fauna Grcenl., 19 (1790). 



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



Turdo truncatus, J. E. Gray, List Mam. Brit. Mus., 104 (1850). 



Turswps 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 simihir 

 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, Delpldnus truncatus, in the 

 third volume of the " Memoirs of the Wernerian Society " 

 — its skull is still preserved in the British Museum. Since 



