PROFESSOR OWEN ON INDIAN CEIACEA. 20 
if even the proportions of the rostral part of the skull (Pl. IX. fig. 1, 21’ 22) did not show 
that it belongs to a different section of Delphinide’. The present part of a Cetacean 
skeleton, as the skulls of those species, figured in Pls. IV. VII. VIII. demonstrate, affords 
better grounds for comparison and specific determination than do coloured drawings of 
the entire animal, however accurate,—the number of skulls of ascertained species in 
home-museums, or otherwise accessible, being much greater than entire and stuffed spe- 
cimens of the Cetacea, which rarely give the natural contour of head or body. 
The animal from which this skull was taken was thrown ashore in the harbour of 
Vizagapatam in too decayed a state to be figured, and was noted as a “small kind of 
Porpoise” by Mr. Elliot, who fortunately secured the present evidence of the species, 
which is now preserved in the British Museum. 
The following are the dimensions of the skull :— 
inches, lines. 
Eee Petia AARC LN (Nit oa (FF siete Ther TK al 
Breadth, greatest, across zygomata . . . . Sigs soar re 
From the back of occipital condyle to aatarbital process of malar es opie G 
From the antorbital process of malar to anterior end of premaxillary 4 8 
From the back part of nostrils to do. do. ion 
These dimensions show that in the shortness of the “facial” as compared with the 
“ cranial ” part of the skull the species agrees with the section of Delphinide, including the 
Grampuses and Porpoises, for which Cuvier proposed the subgeneric name Phocena*, 
and which, in his ‘Ossemens Fossiles,’ tome v. part i. (1823), he distinguished as 
“§ 2. Les Dauphins a téte obtuse” (p. 280), from “ § 1. Les Dauphins a bec” (p. 275) 
(Delphinus, proper)’. 
The number of Delphinide with obtuse heads or short jaws, which have since been 
observed, have manifested so many minor modifications in the relative size, shape, and 
number of the teeth, in the relative size and length of the jaws, in the formation of the 
bony palate, in the extent of anchylosis, and the forms of processes, &c., of the cervical ver- 
tebre, that numerous subgenera have been founded on these characters. Nevertheless, 
as each additional kind of blunt-headed Dolphin tends to exemplify the gradational 
tendency of these modifications, the benefit to zoology of the additional guasi-generic 
names is doubtful; and I shall refer the present skull, which appears to me to belong 
to an undescribed species, to the Phocena brevirostris, as a member of the section of 
Cuvier’s Phocene, characterized by conical teeth, in which its nearest alliance appears 
to be with the Phocena gloticeps, Cuv." 
1 The following is Mr. Elliot’s note respecting this specimen :—“ August 1852. Got the skull of a porpoise 
which one of the fishermen found dead at the mouth of the Vizagapatam river. He called it ‘Ganumu,’ and 
described it as having a rounded head, without beak, colour black or dark above, white below; perhaps a 
Phocena or Globicephalus.” 
2 Régne Anim. tome i. p. 290 (1829). 3 Thid. p. 287. 
4 Thid. p. 290; Annales du Muséum, tome xix.; Ossem. Foss. tome v. part i. p. 290, tab, 21. pls. 1, 2, 3, figs: 
11, 12,13. 
VOL. VI. PART I. E 
