Haast.—On Euphysetes pottsii. 97 
the same species under three different names (see Trans. Zool. Soc., VI., 1869, 
p. 127), and who mixes up together, under one name, the skulls of two such 
large and distinct animals, as a one-horned and two-horned rhinoceros, under a 
single name, as a double-horned one. (See P.Z.S., 1867, p. 1015.) I need 
not, but could, refer to many more instances of the same kind. I am in the 
habit of estimating from what is written about what I know, the reliance I 
may place upon what is written of what I do not know, and have thus lost 
my confidence in this author's writings on zoological questions. He may be 
an admirable comparative anatomist, and I am told that since he has had the 
well-determined skeletons of the Zoological Department in the British Museum 
so easy of access, he does not make the mistakes that he formerly did, and his 
observations on the recent Ziphioid Whales are all made on skulls which 
I had previously determined and named. 
It is an old complaint that persons will write ma what they have a 
limited knowledge of. Thus the comparative anatomists are always giving 
their opinions on the limits and definitions of genera and names that ought to 
be used—subjects not much in their way, and on which they have very crude 
ideas. What would they say if a zoologist interfered with their anatomical 
details, their confused nomenclature of bones, and their much controverted 
homologies? But it is the more remarkable when we consider how very few 
animals have been dissected, and how imperfectly those that have been dissected 
have been described, as is proved by their own papers (sce for instance Mr. 
Clarke’s late paper on the hippopotamus, Proc. Zool. Soc. 1872, p. 185), that 
an anatomist should leave his subject and diverge to write upon the synonyma 
of species and the priority of names, all of which is mere compilation on his 
part. — 
Art. XIX.—On the Occurrence of a New Species of Euphysetes (E. pottsii), 
a remarkably small Catodont Whale, on the Coast of New Zealand. 
By Jurus Haast, Ph.D., F.R.S., Director of the Canterbury Museum. 
Plate XV. 
[Read before the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, 6th August, 1873.] 
Amonest the specimens lately added to the collections in the Canterbury 
Museum, either new to science, or at least to New Zealand, none is more 
interesting than that of a remarkably small catodont whale, allied to 
Luphysetes grayii, which was stranded amongst the rocks in Governor Bay, 
near Ohinitahi, the residence of T. H. Potts, Esq., F.L.S., by whom it was 
secured and presented to the Canterbury Museum. 
As far as I am aware only another species of the genus Zuphysetes exists, 
N 
