914 Transactions.— Zoology. 
an open space between the tentacles, or sometimes broken up into two 
separate patches. The colour of the papille is usually a dark grey or 
brown with two or three opaque white specks. Length, 1-2 inches ; 
breadth, 1-1 inch. 
Common under stones near low-water mark in Auckland Harbour. 
2. Leptoplana (?) brunnea, n. sp. 
Body oblong, thin, flat, depressed, smooth, and even; margin ample, 
entire. Colour of the upper surface a chocolate- or reddish-brown, sprinkled 
and streaked with minute darker specks; under surface much paler, the 
dendritic gastro-vascular canals showing through. No distinct head or 
tentacles. Eye-specks very numerous, minute, placed in a row just within 
the margin all round the anterior portion of the body. Total length, 1-2 
inches ; breadth, 4—1 inch. 
Common under stones in muddy places in Auckland Harbour. 
The position of the eye-specks does not at all agree with Stimpson’s 
definition of Leptoplana given in the Proceedings of the Academy of Sciences, 
Philadelphia, 1857, p. 21; but at present I do not know a better genus in 
which to place it. 
Ant. XXV.— Notes on a Skeleton of Megaptera lalandii (novs&-zealandis), 
Gray. By Prof. Junius von Haast, Ph.D., F.R.S. 
(Read before the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, 6th April, 1882.] 
Tux Canterbury Museum possesses a skeleton of this whale, caught on May 
6th, 1875, in Akaroa Harbour. The animal, a female, was accompanied 
by her calf. This was also killed, but unfortunately I heard of it too late 
for recovering its skeleton. Hitherto, as far as I am aware, no complete 
skeleton of this species had been obtained in New Zealand, although con- 
siderable portions of it are preserved in several museums in the Colony. 
The New Zealand species was established by the late Dr. Gray from an 
earbone alone; but Dr. Hector, after having compared the skull of our 
Megaptera with that of the Cape of Good Hope in the Paris Museum, states 
that the animals belong both to the same species.* With this conclusion I 
fully agree, because, after comparing carefully the different parts of the 
Canterbury Museum specimen, with those described and figured in the 
Ostéographie des Cétacées by Van Beneden and Gervais, no distinctive 
features of sufficient importance could be found to separate the New Zea- 
lannd humpback whale from that occurring at the Cape. As the specimen 
under review had already been cut up before I became aware of its capture, 
* Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. X., p. B36. 
