196 REINHARDT ON 



bottom, now forming part of the soil of England. At all events we can hardly help believing in the 

 identity until, either by a direct comparison, or by means of a more accurate description, and 

 more detailed figures of Mr. Owen's fossil specimen, we should be able to point out possible 

 differences, which cannot be derived from the information about this specimen at present before 

 us. But whether our dolphin be the same as Owen's Fhocæna crassidens, or not, it has a peculiar 

 interest ; for though related both with the Orcas, with the Glohiocepliali, and with the genus 

 Grampus of Gray, yet it cannot (except by forcing their natural limits), be put down as be- 

 longing to any of those genera, either according to its external characters, or according to the 

 peculiarities of its skeleton. The outward appearance of our dolphin is (as we have already said) 

 pretty satisfactorily known from the photographs and the model taken from the Kiel specimen, 

 copies of which are added to this paper, and I shall not stop to give a minute description of it, being 

 unable to add anything to what is abeady shown by these representations. The hitherto un- 

 known osteology, however, I shall try to detail by means of the more or less complete skeletons 

 of the three individuals which have been at my disposal. Of these individuals, the female stranded 

 at Asnæs is not only (as might be supposed, on account of its more considerable size) an older 

 animal than either of the others, but, judging by the appearance of the bones, even an extremely 

 old individual ; the specimen stranded at Refsnæs is, indeed, only very shghtly smaller 

 than the male thrown ashore at Middelfart ; but the sternum, still consisting of separate pieces, 

 and the cervical vertebi'se, less completely ankylosed, make it nevertheless clear that it is the 

 youngest of the three ; but even this individual is by no means a very young animal. 



Though all parts of the skeleton of this dolphin may, generally speaking, be called 

 rather powerful in proportion to its size, yet this may more especially be said about the skull, 

 distinguished by its heavy, almost clumsy form, and making nearly one sixth (more exactly two 

 thirteenths) of the full length of the dried skeleton. 



Of the dolphins which must be considered as most nearly related to ours, viz., the 

 ca'ing-whales, the grampuses, and the killers, the last-mentioned may, perhaps, be said to resemble 

 it most, as far as the general outline of the skull is concerned ; in this respect, we should say that 

 our dolphin differs more from the grampuses, and most, no doubt, from the ca'ing-whales. If we 

 examine the two woodcuts (pages 197 and 198), representing the skull of the individual stranded 

 at Refsnæs at one fourth of its natural size, as seen from the side (fig. 1 ), and from above 

 (fig. 2), and compare them with the head of an Orca, it will be seen at once that the resem- 

 blance between them appears principally in the cranium, properly so called, and is especially 

 produced by the great development of the occipital ridge, and its direction, as well as by the 

 considerable circumference of the temporal fossæ, which again is in relation to the powerful set 

 of teeth, and the corresponding weight and massiveness of the lower jaw. In the details, 

 however, we shall find deviations enough. Thus, the back of the head or the occiput does not 

 slope so obliquely behind, nor is it concave as in the Orcas ; but, on the other hand, it is not so 

 abruptly raised, and, at the same time, hardly so much vaulted as in Grampus or Glohiocepkalus. 



The temporal fossæ are further very deeply excavated in the Orcas, and that part of them 

 which is formed by the frontals is rather larger than smaller than their hindmost part, bounded 

 by the parietal and temporal bones. In our crassidens, on the contrary, that part of the tem- 



