480 PROF. FLOWER ON THE DELPHINIDiE. [NoV. 20, 



of the College of Surgeons there is anothei', of uiikuowa origin, 

 exactly resemhling them ; and the similarity of the three, and their 

 difference from all the others, especially in their considerably smaller 

 size (the entire length of the skull being only 440 mm.) and rather 

 more numerous teeth (|e1 '" the College specimen), leave me no 

 hesitation about retaining this as a distinct species. In the Paris 

 Museum there is a skull from the China seas, of about the same 

 size and very like these, but that the borders of the premaxillaries 

 are not so uiuch contracted in the proximal part of the beak. The 

 teeth are ^l, but as the apex of the upper jaw has been damaged, 

 possibly a few more may have been originally present. 



All "the other British-Museum skulls certainly resemble each 

 other closely, though with slight diff'erences. T. cymodice may be 

 at once expunged from the list. It is founded upon a single skull of 

 a very young animal ; the basilar suture is not closed, and all its 

 distinguishing characters are those of immaturity. It is impossible 

 to say even of which variety it is the young. 



The others may be divided into two types — those with a broader 

 and more flattened rostrum, and those in which the rostrum is 

 narrower. This is a difference, it will he. observed, which may 

 depend upon age, or perhaps on sex, as, according to Fischer's 

 observations quoted above, the rostrum of the female is broader 

 than that of the male. To the first type belong most of the 

 undoubted European specimens assigned to T. truncatus ; to the 

 latter most of the exotic ones, or those of unknown locality, assigned 

 to T, metis and T. eurynome. This last is founded on one skull 

 only, which difi^ers from T. metis in the teeth being slightly smaller 

 and more numerous {i.e. '!). T. aduncus, the large species figured 

 by Gervais, is of the narrow form, as is also one assigned to Tursiops 

 tursio {Tursio truncatus of Gray), " de la Manche," figured in the 

 same plate. There is one Hunterian skull in the College Museum, 

 of unknown locality (No. :^480), of this type. It may be remarked 

 that the two broad skulls of which the sex is known — viz., the 

 one sent to Hunter by Jenner from Berkeley, and the one taken 

 at the mouth of the Thames in 1828, are both females; and 

 a decidedly narrow one lately received into the collection is 

 that of a male which lived some months in the Brighton and West- 

 minster Aquariums, — thus quite coutirmiug Fischer's observa- 

 tions. 



We have a tolerably full description of the external characters 

 of a Tursiops common in the New-Zealand seas, which has been 

 assigned, without, as far as I can learn, any definite reason, to 

 Gray's 1\ metis ' ; and it is interesting to find that, as far as this 



gillivray, who Las gi\cii a. description of the external characters of the 

 animals, accompanied by measurements. See Proc. Zool. Soc. 18G2, p. 143. 



' '• Description of the ' Oow-fish ' or ' Bottle-nosed Dolphin ' ( Tursio metis) of 

 the Sounds on the west coast of Otago," by Captain T. W. Huttou. Trans. 

 N.-Z. lust. vol. viii. (1875), p. 180. For the skeleton, see Hector, "Notes on 

 New-Zealand Cetacea," Trans. N.-Z. Inst. vol. ix. (1876), p. 477. 



