1883.] PROF. FLOWER ON THE DRLPHINIDyE. 481 



description enables us to judge, there is absolutely nothing to 

 distinguish it, either in the external proportions, the distribution 

 of the colours, or the osteological characters, from the common 

 T. tursio of the European seas. It is tnio that in the only skeleton 

 described it is stated that but 12 pairs of ribs are present ; but 

 as the last pair "is so often wanting or lost in preparation, this 

 is of little consequence, especially as the total number of vertebree 

 is given as 64. 



An animal of this genus is also found in the North Pacific off the 

 Californian coast, the "Cow-fish" of Scammon, Tursio gillii of Dall'; 

 but there is notliing in the description of the external characters, 

 " based upon two momentary observations," the habits, or the one 

 portion of the animal actually obtained, to distinguish it from T. 

 tursio of the European seas. Perhaps the skull in the Paris 

 Museum, sent from Monterey, California, in 1879, belongs to this 

 form if distinct. It is 510 mm. in length, and with comparatively 



few and large teeth, ^^in number, and 7 mm. in antero-posterior dia- 

 meter at the base. It is very like the skull of Gray's T. metis, figured 

 in the ' Zoology of the Erebus and Terror.' 



In the International Fisheries Exhibition of the present year, 

 among the beautiful and instructive models of Cetaceans and other 

 aquatic animals shown by the United States Commissioners, are 

 coloured casts in papier mache of an animal of this group, and of 

 the heads of two individuals marked male and female, the former 

 being apparently the same individual as the entire animal. These 

 are labelled Tursio subridens. True. MS. On comparing them with 

 the figure of i). tursio in the Trans. Zool. Soc. vol. xi. pi. 1, from 

 the coast of Wales, the only noticeable difference is in the colour of 

 the lower jaw and chin. In the figure this part is entirely white. 

 In the male American specimen it is black, this colour extending 

 farther back in the middle line below, than on the sides of the jaw, 

 and terminating in a point at about the level of the eye. This might 

 have been thought to constitute a specific difference ; but in the cast 

 said to be that of a female of the same species there is only a dark 

 gray patch confined to the anterior part of the luider surface of the 

 chin ; so that with the totally white-throated English specimen, we 

 have three different and quite disthict conditions of the coloration of 

 this region — one, that of the American female, being exactly inter- 

 mediate between the other two. Until a larger series of specimens 

 are examined, it would not be safe to establish specific distinctions 

 on such characters, especially when we bear in mind the different 

 descriptions of the colours of animals attributed to this species 

 given by Fischer. A skull attributed to this form, presumably of 

 one of the same individuals, is in the collection : it is that of a not 

 fullv adult animal ; and on comparing it with a specimen in the same 

 state of development taken off tlie coast of Kent, near Margate, 



I 



Scammon, ' Marine Mammals of the North- western Coast of North America,' 

 pp. 101 and 288 (1874V 



