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Show 672 MR. J. W. CLARK ON EARED SEALS. [Dec. 7, much the same characters as Pe'ron does-adding, that when the hair is divided "a reddish fur of no great thickness is seen"*. Lastly, though the skull has some characters in common with that of our specimen, as the way in which the incisors and canines interlock, and the peg-like process at the union of the prsemaxillse, the molars are quite different. They have all three cusps each. I examined this skull on two successive visits to Paris last summer. It is marked " 1539. Phoque cendree ou ourson, Phoca cinerea ou ursina, adulte du Port Jackson, Nouvelle Hollande, par M M . Quoy et Gaimard, expedition de 1'Astrolabe etc. Aout 1827, Voy. de l'Astr. 89. Peau a la Zoologie." Its length is 10£ inches, width 6|. The molars, |^|» have never been disturbed. The opening of the palate is long and V-shaped. The whole skull bears a very close resemblance to that of the type of Otaria delalandei=0. pusilla, from the Cape of Good Hope. The stuffed skin in the Zoological Museum, No. 202, is in a bad state, faded and dilapidated. It indicates an animal about 8 feet long, without under-fur. The figures of it in the plates of the ' Voyage de 1'Astrolabe ' (plates 12, 13) are clearly inaccurate. Plate 12 shows nails on all the digits of both " pes " and " manus ; " plate 13, on all those of the " manus " and on four only of the " pes " f. On the whole, therefore, I am disposed to think that the name 0. cinerea should be restricted to this species, and the older name O. forsteri, given by Lesson (Diet. Class. d'Histoire Naturelle, xiii. 421), reserved for our animal. The name cinerea was applied to the latter by Dr. Gray, though he doubted whether it really was identical with the O. cinerea of Peron (Supplement to the Catalogue of Seals and Whales in the British Museum, 1871, p. 24 ; Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 1866, xviii. p. 236), when describing as "Arctocephalus cinereus, Australian Fur-Seal," two young skulls and a stuffed skin sent from North Australia by Mr. John Macgillivray in 1853; on which specimen he founded subsequently his genus Gypsophoca (P. Z. S. 1872, p. 659). I have studied these^skulls carefully, and feel certain that they are only the young of our animal- an opinion which I am glad to find is shared by Dr. Hector. The stuffed specimen in the British Museum is 3 feet 5| inches long. Pelage dark brown, nearly black above, with a dense pale brown fur over the whole body, thickest on the back. On the breast, a light yellow tip appears upon the hair, which becomes longer under the throat. Beneath and round the eye is a dark spot. The pale colour of the throat extends between eye and ear, and over the under surface of the body. This brings m e to the skulls from Amsterdam Island marked e,f, g, h:-e. 6\ inches long, 3f wide ; /. 6| inches long, 4 wide; g. 7\ inches long, 4 | wide; h. 7\ inches long, 4 wide. Teeth normal in all except g, where the last upper molar on the * "On voit un feutre roux peu epais " (Zoologie de l'Astrolabe, i. p. 90). t The description (Zoologie, i. p. 90) says: "Les ongles des membres anterieurs sont a peine indiques. Ceux des posterieurs sont etroits; les trois inter-modiaires sont plus saillans, et. l'exterieur n'est point apparent." |