26 HAND-LIST or SEALS, MORSES, 



tively slender, 6| inches long, compressed and flat in front. 

 (PI. XVII.) 

 Otaria pygmsea, Gray, Ann. ^ Mag. Nat. Hist. 1874, xiii. p. 326. 



Hah. Unknown. The specimen (58. 5. 4. 17) was received from 

 the Zoological Society in 1858. 



This skull is partly broken behind, and wants all the grinders 

 and the greater part of the cutting-teeth. The canines are com- 

 paratively small, which makes me think that it belongs to a female ; 

 indeed I might regard it as the female belonging to the same 

 species as the skull before described but for the peculiar form and 

 narrowness of the palate. The palates of the two sexes of the 

 common Sea-lion are of the same form, but they become deep with 

 age and those of the males more contracted behind ; so that they 

 give no authority for believing that the palates of the two sexes of 

 an allied species are so different. 



This species appears to have been first described by Tschudi, and 

 figured in his ' Fauna Peruana ;' and Dr. Peters, from Tschudi's de- 

 scription of the skull, refers it to the subgenus Phocarctos, but after- 

 wards he received, described, and figured the skull of one of the 

 original specimens, and found it to be a species of his subgenus 

 Otaria. Ho describes the skull as rather more than 9 inches long. 

 His figure agrees very well with the Museum specimens ; but he 

 does not take any notice of the form of the lower jaw being different 

 from that of Otaria jubata (Monatsb. 1866, p. 667). 



Dr. James M'Bain, in the Journ. Anat. Phys. vol. iii. p. 109, de- 

 scribes a skull from the Chincha Islands, which he thinks may be 

 the same as Otaria ulhce, but has some points of difference, and 

 proposes to call it 0. Oraii. On Dr. Peters's plate of 0. ulloa; I 

 had marked, "It is exactly like Dr. Turner's specimen from Mr. 

 M'Bain." 



II. Skull with the palate shoD't, the oiieniny of the inner nostrils some 

 dista?>ce in front of the line betioeen the condyles. 



Judging by the very few specimens of the skulls of the very young 

 Sea-bears in the British Museum, and by the figures of the skulls 

 of the young that have been published, they offer two variations in 

 respect of the shape of the internal nostrils : — 



In one case the opening of the internal nostril at the end of the 

 palate of the young, as in the adult animal, is short, broad, truncated 

 in front, with sometimes a central notch ; and the edge of the internal 

 nostril, in the very young animals, as in Otaria, is near to the line 

 between the condyles, but not so near as in that genus ; and as the 

 animal grows, and the bones of the face lengthen, the opening of the 

 internal nostrils extends further forward, and becomes gradually ob- 

 long, narrower, and arched in front, as in Gj/psopJioca tro2:)icaiis. 



In the second case the hinder opening of the nostril of the very 

 young skull in Vallorhinus, as figured by Mr. Allen, in Eumetopias 

 SteUeri, as shown by the specimens in the Museum, and (judging by 

 the half-grown specimens) in Arctocrphalas antnrciim/ and Zalo- 



