1883.] ON THE FEMALE ORGANS OF THE INDIAN ELEPHANT. 517 



In the great revision of the nomenclature of the Cetacea under- 

 taken by Dr. Gray in the Zoology of the Voyage of the ' Erebus ' 

 and ' Terror ' (1840), Rudolphi's Whale was called Balanopfera lati- 

 ceps, an ill-chosen name, as the head is not wider proportionally 

 than in other members of the genus. In Dr. Gray's next revision \ 

 the genus BalcBnoptera being divided into three, it appears as Sib- 

 baldius laticeps, under which name I described the skeletons referred 

 to above in the P. Z. S. for 1864. A still further subdivision of the 

 genera of Whales by Dr. Gray in 1871' resulted in the synonym of 

 Rudolphius laticeps. 



Lesson's specific name borealis, whether regarded as original or as 

 a translation of Cuvier's designation, has undoubted priority, and has 

 moreover received the sanction of Van Beneden and Gervais, being 

 used in their magnificent work on the osteology of the Cetacea. It 

 has also been adopted by P. Fischer in his valuable memoir on the 

 Cetacea of the south-west of France^ 



The generic name is of course of much less importance, depending 

 entirely upon whether it is considered expedient to retain Lacepede's 

 genus Balcenoptera in its integrity for all the Rorquals, or whether 

 any of the subdivisions proposed by Dr. Gray should be adopted. 

 Although these, especially in the later revisions, became far too nume- 

 rous to be considered of generic value, being founded in many cases 

 on mere individual variation, or on characters depending on imma- 

 turity (as Benedenia), there is perhaps something to be said for the 

 original triple division into Physalus, Sibbaldius, and Balcenoptera, 

 which certainly represent three distinct sections of the group, cha- 

 racterized by osteoloijical differences, described in my "Notes on the 

 Whales in the Museums of Holland and Belgium," P. Z. S. 1864. 

 As, however, we have still so much to learn of the Rorquals of other 

 seas, and as the possibility of intermediate forms being discovered is 

 not yet exhausted, I think it better for the present at least to retain 

 the old generic designation for them all. 



3. Additional Observations on the Structure of the Female 

 Organs of the Indian Elephant {Elephas indicus) . By 

 M. Watson^ M.D., Professor of Anatomy in the Owens 

 College, Manchester. 



[Received July 19, 1883.] 



In a previous communication to this Society * I directed attention 

 to the diversity of statement on the part of anatomists with regard 

 to the structure of the female organs of the Indian Elephant. In 



' P. Z. S. 1864, p. 399. 



2 ' Suppl. Cat. Seals and Whales in Brit. INf us.' p. .54 (1871). 



3 Fischer cites the species as B. borealis, Cuyier, following the practice usual 

 with French authors in the numerous cases in which Cuvier described .species 

 under a vernacular appeUatiou without bestowing upon them any systematic 

 Latin name. 



* Trans. Zool. Soc. 1881, p. 111. 



