674 MR. J. W. CLARK ON EARED SEALS. [ Dee. 7, 
its teeth. The measurements and colour are the same, except that 
the yellow is clearer. 
The only difficulty I feel in establishing the identity of this species 
from Amsterdam Island with the Australian one, is the presence of this 
yellow colour on the breast and sides of head, though, indeed, that is 
found on the young animal in the British Museum from North Aus- 
tralia, as noted above. But on that character only, I do not feel jus- 
tified in making a new species, but would prefer to regard the Am- 
sterdam specimen as a variety only, and wait for further information 
and more specimens. I observed very similar external characters in 
Professor Peters’s beautiful Otaria gazella*, from Kerguelen’s Land, 
which I saw at Berlia thissummer; but the skull was very different. 
While attempting to establish the identity of the two described Fur- 
Seals of Australia, I ought to mention that I find a competent colonial 
naturalist like Dr. Haast recording a second species as “ Gypsophoca 
tropicalis, Little Fur-Seal”’ in his list of the bones found in the 
Sumner Moa-cave (Trans. N.Z. Inst. vii. p. 84). On the other 
hand, I think there can be no doubt that the species before us from 
New Zealand is identical with that with “the sharp pointed nose and 
the general colour of the hair approaching to black,’’ seen by Flinders 
in Bass’s Straits. If this be really the case, namely that the Fur- 
Seal of Tasmania is identical with that of New Zealand, it is more 
than probable that that of the Nuyts archipelago and the rest of 
the south coast of Australia ought to be referred to the same species. 
We now come to Péron’s Otaria albicollis. 1 venture to suggest 
that this large Ofaria with a white spot on the back of the neck 
can be no other than Gray’s Neophoca lobata, figured by Gould, 
‘Mammals of Australia,’ ili. 49, and Quoy and Gaimard’s Ctaria 
australis (Voyage de l’Astrolabe, Zoologie, i. p. 95, pl. 14). The 
young skull, figured by Gray in his ‘Spicilegia Zoologica,’ plate iv. 
fig. 1, when establishing the species, has the peculiar characters of 
O. australis which I have observed in the type specimens preserved 
in the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes, Paris. The most striking 
of these is the rounded form of the upper surface of the skull between 
and behind the orbits, which is so marked as to give it a strong 
resemblance, when viewed sideways, to that of Ursus labiatus. The 
skull of Gray’s Neophoca lobata (figured, Hand-list, plate xxx.), 
which is of a very old animal, shows this peculiar shape extremely 
well, and also the remarkably broad recurved orbital processes of the 
frontals. Indeed Dr. Gray himself seems to have regarded the two 
species as identical (/. c. p. 43). The specimens at Paris that can 
unquestionably be referred to this species are three skulls (Nos. 1502, 
1532, and 1533) and one skeleton, not adult, all brought by the ‘ Astro- 
labe,’ and one skull (No. 1535) brought by the ‘Bonite.’ The number 
of the molars, on which Dr. Gray lays great stress (J. c. p. 41), is 
clearly not so constant as in others, but still normal more often than 
the reverse. The skeleton has m. = nos. 1502 and 1533, m. = 
* Described by him in the ‘Monatsbericht der k. Akad. der Wissenschaften 
zu Berlin,’ June 10, 1875. 
