1873.] SEALS OF THE AUCKLAND ISLANDS. 759 



Museum, whence it passed into that of Mr. Parkinson on the south 

 side of Black friars Bridge, and, together with the very bad figures 

 of it to be seen in their works, formed the basis of the descriptions 

 of Shaw and Desmarest. It may very likely turn out that this is 

 the young of Euotaria nigrescens, as a young male, identified with 

 that species, was taken near Port Famine during the voyage of the 

 ' Adventure ' and ' Beagle ' *, and the male pups of the southern 

 Fur-Seal are said to be of a light brown colour when they are a few 

 months oldf. 



It remains for me to say a few words on Dr. Gray's genus 

 Gypsophoca. Dr. Hector published, in the ' Transactions of the 

 New-Zealand Institute' for 1871, a description of two skulls of Seals, 

 one adult from Milford Sound, on the E. coast of the S. island of 

 New Zealand, the other a young skull from the Auckland Islands. 

 He regarded them as identical, and identified them with Arcto- 

 cephalus cinereus, the Fur-Seal of New Zealand. Dr. Gray very 

 properly distinguished them, and, while agreeing with Dr. Hector 

 that the adult skull belonged to A. cinereus, made a new genus for 

 the other, and called it Gypsophoca tropicalis, identifying with it a 

 very young skull and a fragment of an older one brought from 

 North Australia by Mr. John Macgillivray, and which are now in the 

 British Museum. This is the skull figured by him (P. Z. S. 1872, 

 p. 660) as from Auckland Island. Dr. Hector's figure is not very 

 clearly drawn ; but, as far as I can make it out, I think that the 

 general form of the skull, as well as that of the auditory bulla and 

 mastoid process is very like the shape of those parts in my younger 

 female skull, and that it may very probably be a young O. hookeri. 

 Mr. Macgillivray' s specirheu I have compared with mine and with 

 Dr. Hector's figure. With all submission to Dr. Gray I cannot 

 think the two should be referred to the same species. The skull in 

 the British Museum from North Australia is that of so young a 

 specimen that it would be difficult, unless one had a very large series 

 of skulls of different sexes and ages to compare it with, to determine 

 its species with certainty, though I suspect it will turn out to be 

 Arctocephalus cinereus. 



P.S. (Jan. 15, 1874). — Since reading the above I have had the 

 opportunity, through the kindness of M. Alphonse Milne-Edwards 

 and Professor Gervais, of examining the collections of the Museum 

 of the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, where I thought it not unlikely 

 that some specimens of Otarice, brought from the Aucklands by the 

 Astrolabe-et-Zele'e Expedition, might be preserved. 



In the osteological collection there is a broken skull, without the 

 lower jaw, marked "lies Auckland. Tele trouvee sur la plage par 

 MM. Hombron et Jaquinot [they were the naturalists to the expe- 

 dition]. L 'expedition a rapporte deux squelettes et deux peaux du 

 O. australisV The greatest length of this skull is lOf ", the greatest 

 width 5 1" ; and it corresponds exactly with the type of Arctocephalus 



* Captain King's Narrative, vol. i. p. 530. t Scott, /. s. c. p. 18. 



