NOTICES OF NEW BOOKS. 227 
remember to have previously seen any account, although it is 
mentioned by name in some lists of Cape animals. Prof. Parker 
says nothing about it in his recently published account of the 
‘Carnivora’ in the second volume of ‘ Cassell’s Natural History.’ 
It is thus referred to by Mr. Moseley :— 
“ Amongst the animals which live on the Cape Peninsula, the Clawless 
Otter, Lutra inunguis, is worthy of mention. It is a very large Otter, 
twice or three times as large when full-grown as the European one. It 
lives about the salt marshes and Jakes, and is tolerably common ; it hunts 
like the South American Marine Otter, in companies, but only of three or 
four. It has no claws on the fore-feet, having lost them by natural 
selection in some way or other, and on the hinder feet the claws are 
wanting on the outer toes, and only rudiments of them remain on the 
middle ones. ‘There are, however, pits marking the places where the claws 
used to exist. The webbing between the toes is also in this Otter rudi- 
mentary; the beast, altogether, is very heavily built, with the head very broad 
and powerful. It appears to be an Otter bent on returning to land habits.” 
Notwithstanding the investigations of previous naturalists 
there, the Cape seems to have proved rather a rich field for 
research to Mr. Moseley, and to have furnished him with some 
valuable material for “Notes.” He was fortunate in finding 
portions of two skulls of Mesoplodon Layardi, a rare ziphioid 
whale which is occasionally procured at the Cape, and which, 
strange to say, seems never to be met with or killed at sea, but 
has only been procured by its running ashore. 
The ziphioids, it may be observed, are a group of the toothed 
whales, and allied to the Sperm Whale. They have the bones of 
the face and upper jaw drawn out and compressed into a long beak- 
like snout, which is composed of solid bone, hard and compact 
like ivory. The upper jaw is devoid of teeth, ‘‘ having lost them,” 
says Mr. Moseley, “‘in the process of evolution,” and the lower 
jaw, which is lengthened and pointed to correspond with the 
upper, retains but a single pair of teeth. 
In the species in question, Mesoplodon Layardi, these two 
teeth in the adult animal become lengthened by continuous 
growth of the fangs into long curved tusks. These arch over the 
upper jaw, or beak, and, crossing one another above it at their 
‘tips, form a ring round it and lock the lower jaw, so that the 
animal can only open its mouth for a very small distance indeed. 
The tusks are seen always to be worn away in front by the 
