RBVIEIV: 401 



tlie plate is from Mr. Sterndale's drawing of a specimen of ours 

 published in these pages. 



This is Phoccena phoccnioidca according to Mr. Blanford. It used 

 to be Neomeris jjhocoGHoides at the British Museumj but Mr. Blanford 

 sees no reason for separating it generically from Phocoeiia communis. 

 The difference is that the European Phoccence have a well-marked 

 back fin, and Neomeris has only a carunculated scar on the back 

 (not well described by our author), looking as if the back fin had 

 been cut oif , and ending backward in a little angle. It is, indeed, 

 an obsolete back fin. The abolition of a needless genus is a good 

 thing, and Mr. Blanford's aid in this direction is here (as very often) 

 valuable. Unluckily, his contempt for Greek has led him into 

 what, if not a barbarism, is at least an absurdity, for Phoccena 

 phoccenoides means " the porpoise that is very like a porpoise/' whereas 

 ■ the essence of this porpoise is that he is not like other porpoises in 

 a rather important feature. An almost identical porpoise has been 

 found in the great Chinese rivers, since such a discovery was 

 predicted in these pages. 



Passing over several Dolphins of no immediate interest, we come 

 to another in which we have some property, the common spotted 

 Dolphin of Bombay harbour, which our author calls Stcno lentiginosus 

 (it had been Dclphinus and Sotalia). Mr. Blanford gives dimensions 

 of an adult female from Vizagapatam, and those of a specimen once 

 in our Museum, a large male. He doubts whether the Vizagapatam 

 measurements are from the fresh specimen, but on comparing 

 them with the Alibag measurements ( made with steel tape 

 and standard on a Dolphin scarcely dead), there appears a 

 general ratio of about seven to nine. This, between female and 

 male Cctacca is not at all unreasonable, and the Vizagapatam 

 measurements must therefore be accepted as correct. Having come 

 from Sir Walter Elliot through Sir R. Owen, they might have claimed 

 this presumption from the first. The plate, however (from Elliot's 

 figure drawn by a native artist), is a hideous caricature of a very 

 graceful animal. The plate of Bclphinm delphis, at 587, gives a 

 much better idea of Steno than its own. 



The last of the Indian Cetaceans, perhaps the most curious, and 

 the only one exclusively Indian (until lately, when we annexed the 



