772 PROFESSOR TURNER ON ZIPHIUS CAVIROSTRIS 



densirostris was applied by De Blainville.*" A skeleton from Lord Howe's 

 Island, recently obtained by Mr Krefft, has also been referred to the same 

 species.t A skull transmitted by Mr Layard from the Cape of Good Hope to 

 the British Museum, and named in the first instance Ziphius Layardi after 

 that naturalist, has recently been described as forming a new genus, Dolichodon, 

 by Dr Gray. \ Mr Krefft has also obtained a whale, 18 feet long, from Little 

 Bay near Sydney, the skeleton of which is in the Sydney Museum ; § he con- 

 siders it to be a new species, and names it Mesoplodon Giintheri ; but Mr 

 Flower thinks that it may be of the same species as Layardi, but with the 

 tooth much less developed ; || Dr Gray, however, regards it as a new genus, 

 and proposes to call it CallidonSk In a paper communicated to the Welling- 

 ton Philosophical Society of New Zealand, January 1870,** Mr Frederick Knox 

 and Dr Hector figure and briefly describe the skull of a young male Ziphioid 

 whale, 9 feet 3 inches long, killed in 1866 in Titai Bay, Cook's Strait ; Dr 

 Gray, though recognising the affinity of this skull to Sowerby's whale, yet 

 because the mandibular teeth are situated at the anterior end of the jaw, refers 

 it to the genus Berardius, and terms it B. HectoriM Lastly, M. Gervais has 

 described and figured by the name of Dioplodon europams \\ the skull of an 

 animal frequenting the seas off the department of La Manche on the North 

 Coast of France, which possesses many affinities with Sowerby's whale. 



Description of the Skull in the Edinburgh Museum. — The skull, to which I 

 next direct the attention of the Society, I recognised in 1869, when examining 

 the Cetacean crania in the Museum of Science and Art in this city. No label 

 or mark of any kind was attached to it to show that any attempt had been 

 made either to identify the species, or even to record the locality from which it 

 had been obtained. Fortunately the Anatomical Museum of the University 

 possesses, through the courtesy of Dr Acland, a copy of the cast of the original 

 example of Sowerby's whale, so that I had no difficulty, on comparing it with 



*Duvernoy called it Mesodiodon densirostre {Ann. des Sc. Nat., 1851, xv. p. 58, plate ii.J, and 

 Gervais has figured it in " Ost^ographie des Cetac^s," plate xxv., as Dioplodon Secliellense. 



t Proc. Zool. Soc., 1870, p. 426 ; and Gray's Synopsis, p. 102. 



X Proc. Zool. Soc., 1865; and Synopsis, p. 101. Beautifully figured as Z. Layardi, by Pro- 

 fessor Owen in his Memoir in Trans. Pala?ontographical Society, vol. xxiii. plate i. 



§ Annals of Natural History, 1871, vii. 368. 



|| Nature, Dec. 7, 1871, p. 105. 



IF Annals of Natural History, 1871, vii. 368. 



** Trans. New Zealand Institute, vol. iii. plates xiv. xv. p. 125 e.s. In Dr Hector's notes it 

 is stated that plate xiv. refers to a specimen captured in Porirua Harbour, 1866, but this is evidently 

 an error, as Mr Knox informs us that only a rude sketch and a few measurements of that animal were 

 preserved. I am indebted to Dr Lauder Lindsay for the opportunity of consulting these Transactions. 



tt Annals of Natural History, 1871, viii. p. 116. 



XX Zoologie et Pal^ontologie Francaises, 2d ed. p. 289. Osteographie des Cetac^s, plate xxiv. Also 

 M. Deslongchamps in Bull. Soc. Linn. Normandie, t. x. 1866. Dr Gray, as if to add one more to 

 the multitude of generic names he has coined in his classification of the Cetacea, calls this specimen 

 NeozipMus (Synopsis, p. 101). 



