8 EDWARD A. WILSON. 
Weddell’s Seals are by no means so liberally scarred by the Killer’s teeth as 
are the Crab-eaters, and this results from the fact that they remain almost always some 
miles on the safer side of the ice-edge, and as far as possible from the open water. 
Here they are comfortably clear of the Killer Whales, which keep to the breaking 
edge of the fast ice, and the more or less open water of the pack. 
The Killer is heard to blow, and the spout is seen before the snout comes 
out of the water. They are generally moving at a rapid rate, and, as a rule, the 
whole head and back and dorsal fin come clear out of the water, after blowing, at 
every rise. They have the same habit of swimming in close proximity side by side 
that we have noticed also in the Rorqual. They may be travelling at a very fast rate, 
yet the pace is so uniform in each individual that they may appear fastened one 
to the other, each half a length in advance of its companion ; constantly appearing and 
disappearing in this manner they give the idea of a single animal with two dorsal 
fins, unless indeed they are so close that they can be separately distinguished. I 
cannot say what is the meaning of this habit either in the Rorqual or the Killer, but 
perhaps the young and the mother thus find an easy way of avoiding separation 
whilst making a passage from one district to another. 
The range of the Orca in the South, as we ourselves observed it, lies between 
S. lat. 30° in W. long. 30°, where the northernmost examples were found, and S. lat. 78° 
in E. long. 170° where we saw hundreds at the farthest point of open water to the 
South. But if, as seems to be the case, the Southern form is identical with the Northern, 
the range of Orca gladiator must be considered universal. That the Southern form is 
identical with the Northern appears evident from Sir James Hector’s mention of two 
examples which were obtained in New Zealand, the first of which ran ashore in 
Lyell’s Bay, while the second, which he says appears to be a fully adult example 
of Orca gladiator, was cast up on the beach at Wanganui. (Proc. Wellington Phil. 
Soe. 1880.) 
It has been reported also from the Seychelles (4° to 5° S. lat.), from the Cape of Good 
Hope, from the Northern Pacific, and from the English coast ; and if further testimony 
is wanted as to its ubiquity, it is to be found in Mr. Bennett’s words :—‘“ Whales thus 
designated appeared to us in small bands, and chiefly in the vicinity of the equator.” * 
LAGENORHYNCHUS OBSCURUS. 
The Dusky Dolphin. 
Delphinus obscurus, Gray, Spic. Zool. (1828), p. 2. 
Lagenorhynchus obscurus, Blanford, Mamm. Brit. India (1888), p. 580, tbique citata.t 
We saw the Dusky Dolphin (Lagenorhynchus obscurus), a well-known and 
unmistakable form, day after day playing round the ship in the Southern ocean. 
We saw also an allied and hitherto unrecognised species of equally characteristic 
* Bennett, “ Whaling Voyage Round the Globe,” 1883 to 1836, ii,, p. 239. 
t The date of Mr. True’s paper is 1889. 
