214 Transactions. — Zoology. 



an open space between the tentacles, or sometimes broken up into two 

 separate patches. The colour of the papillae is usually a dark grey or 

 brown with two or three opaque white specks. Length, 1-2 inches ; 

 breadth, ^-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, £-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 Academyof Sciences, 

 Philadelphia, 1857, p. 21 ; but at present I do not know a better genus in 

 which to place it. 



Art. XXV. — Notes on a Skeleton of Megaptera lalandii (novaa-zealandise), 

 Gray. By Prof. Julius von Haast, Ph.D., P.E.S. 

 [Read before the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, 6th April, 1882.] 

 The 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 

 Osteographie des Cetacees 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. 336. 



