REPORT ON THE CETACEA. 29 



as is referred to by Dr Hector iu his paper, read in November 1872, as liaviug beeu 

 captured in Port Cooper, and the skeleton of which was being prepared for the Canterbury 

 Museum. Dr von Haast named the animal Epiodon i^Ziphius) novce-zealandicB. In an 

 appendix to his paper he applied the same name to another skull, also of an adult female 

 stranded in July 1873 in Akaroa Harbour. Von Haast considers that these animals are 

 closely allied, if not belonging, to the same species as Epiodon chathamiensis, but as 

 there are some minor differences between them, of which he more especially refers to the 

 form of the teeth, he prefers to apply a different specific name to these animals. 



Professor Flower, at the same meeting of the Zoological Society,^ in commenting on 

 Dr von Haast's paper, stated that he saw no good grounds for distinction between' 

 Ziphius novce-zealandice and Ziphius chathamiensis, and that, indeed, von Haast's two 

 animals differed more from each other than either of them did from Ziphius chatlicmiiensis. 

 Further, that the photographs sent by Dr von Haast, when compared with the skull at 

 the British Museum which Dr Gray had named Petrorhynchus capensis, did not show 

 any greater differences than are consistent with the range of individual variation, and 

 that no proof had yet been given that any clearly defined specific difference existed 

 between Petrorhynchus capensis, Ziphius australis, and Ziphius cavirostris. 



Dr Hector, in a second memoir in the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute 

 (vol. X. p. 342, 1878), states that the specific distinction made by von Haast between the 

 Chatham Island and New Zealand specimens is founded on little more than the form of 

 the teeth, which in the specimen in the Canterbury Museum had become absorbed, only 

 the fangs being left, whilst in the specimen from the Chatham Islands the teeth were 

 still large and serviceable. He does not recognise, therefore, any specific difference 

 between the animal he had originally described and those named by von Haast Ziphius 

 novcB-zecdandice. But Dr Hector goes still further, and, influenced evidently by the facts 

 and arguments advanced in my memoir on Ziphius cavirostris, to which he makes 

 special reference in his paper, now regards his Epiodon [Zipjhius) chathamiensis as the 

 same species as the Ziphius cavirostris of Cuvier ; a conclusion which coincides entirely 

 with that which I had arrived at from a comparison of the skulls of these animals. M. 

 Van Beneden in a recent paper On the Geographical Distribution of the Cetodonts ^ 

 reviews the whole of the evidence up to that time advanced on this subject. He now 

 regards not only his Ziphius indicus but the specimens from the Cape, and that described 

 by Dr Burmeister from near Buenos Ayres, as the same as the Ziphius cavirostris, so that he 

 supports the opinion I had expressed in my original memoir, that the exotic as well as the 

 EurojDean crania, which have up to this time been described, are all examples of one species — 

 the Ziphius cavirostris of Cuvier. The present state of our knowledge of this cetacean 

 strengthens, therefore, the statement which I had made in that memoir that the geographical 

 range of the Ziphius cavirostris equals that possessed by the spermaceti whale. 



' Proceedings, 1876, vol. xliv. p. 477. - Bulletin de 1' Academic royale de Belgique, April 1878, vol. xlv. No. 4. 



