92 



The English name is derived from the discovery, in 1840, of the 

 fossil remains, in the fens of Lincolnshire, of a whale, of which the 

 living representative was then unknown. The skull, shortly after the 

 discovery, was fully described by Prof Owen, in the " British Fossil 

 Mammalia." 



Twenty years subsequently, M. Eeinhardt, a Danish naturalist, 

 found a species of whale existing in the northern seas, which, by the 

 careful examination of its skeleton, he ascertained to be identical with 

 Owen's Psuud. crassidens. 



" I therefore believe," observes M. Eeinhardt, " that we must really 

 acknowledge this Phocsena crassidens of Owen to be the dolphin 

 stranded on our coasts ; however strange it may seem that our first 

 knowledge of a Cetacean, of which great shoals are still in our time 

 roaminij; about in our Northern Sea, should have come to us through 

 an individual which thousands of yeai-s ago found its resting place on 

 a sea bottom, now forming part of the soil of England." 



Theru were two of these whales stranded on the shore near Asnfes, 

 on the Danish coast, and they measured li and 19 feet respectively. 



Teeth ~^, large, conical ; rather acute. 



Colour — black, paler below. 



luhab : North Sea. 



SOUTHEEN YAEIETT. 



rsiorDOECA MEEiDiONAiis,^ Elower. The Tasmanian Killer. 



Synonyms — Pseudorca meridionalis, Elower, Pro. Zool. Soc, 1864 ; 

 Gray, S. & "W., p. 291 ; Suppl., p. 79. 

 Llach Grampus of wlialers, Crowther. 



Teeth inro, l<irge, conical, acute ; smallest in front, largest in the central 

 portion. Symphysis of mandible nearly i of the entire length of 

 the ramus. 



Colour, black, with the under portions whitish. 



Males much larger than the females, and similar in size to the 

 animals of the preceding species. 



Inhab : South Sea : coasts of Tasmania. 



'■ To find di.^tinctive characters to separate the present species from 

 O. crassidens is a matter of greater difficulty." " The beak is much more 

 pointed at the extremity, and the premaxillaries are of different form." 

 " I tliinli; that these are sufficient, together with the creat improbability 

 of the same species being found in such widely different regions, to 

 justify my regarding the small grampus from Tasmania, however familiar 

 to the inhabitants of that country, as a species new to zoological 

 literature, and imposing upon it the name of Orca (Pseudorca) meri- 

 dionalis," 



' Southern. 



