242 REVIEWS. 
To both, Mr. Allen objects; “the comparatively unimportant 
character furnished by the rostral outline being far less character- 
istic than its slender elongated muzzle and other features,” he 
says, and he deems the character of the rostral profile to be “too 
trivial to require more than the incidental remarks already given 
to it.” How, may I ask, is the “slender elongated muzzle” -pro- 
duced if not by the “straight or incurved fronto-rostral. profile,” 
i.e. the compression of the maxillary and nasal bones, and what 
is “the slender elongated muzzle” but the expression of such 
structural characteristic? * 
As to the “sagittal groove from which are reflected the low 
ridges” of most of the species as opposed to the ‘‘ solid much el- 
evated crest” of Zalophus, the characters, it must be remembered, 
are comparative and only to be considered with relation to each 
other (like the comparative diagnoses of Mr. Allen). Although 
backed by Mr. Allen,t I however admit that my language has not 
been happily selected and may mislead. 
It need only be added, however, in the language of Mr. Allen, 
that ‘‘ Zalophus, so far as the skull is concerned, is the most dis- 
tinct generic form of the family Otariade, it being thoroughly 
distinct from all the others. Whether such distinct characters are 
more than counterbalanced by such as Mr. Allen has used for the 
differentiation of his subfamilies, may safely be left, without 
further argument on my part, to the judgment of others. 
A word as to “conservatism.” I used the term ‘‘extreme con- 
servatism” because the reduction of species is popularly consid- 
ered to be an evidence of conservatism. But Mr. Allen’s ‘‘ extreme 
conservatism ” degenerates into radicalism in his attack on the cur- 
rent views with respect to the limits of the species. The Otaria 
Hooperi, for example, has characters sufficiently ‘‘ tangible” to 
have deceived all authors who have examined specimens (among 
them some of the first of living naturalists), as to its affinities, and 
it has been separated generically from what (with Mr. Allen) I am 
disposed to consider its nearest ally and congener, and yet Mr. 
Allen (without having seen it) referred it to Otaria jubata as an 
* Mr. Allen apparently having at first recognized this relation of cause and effect, 
in his diagnosis of Zalophus described “ the superior profile from the postorbital proc- 
ess anteriorly, gently declined.” Allen, op. cit., 48. 
t“ The sagittal crest (of Zalophus) forms a remarkably high, thin, very bony plate, 
leled in its great develop in any other g of the family.” — Allen op. cit. 
p. 48. 
