| OCR Text |
Show 674 MR. J. W. CLARK ON EARED SEALS. [Dec. 7, its teeth. The measurements and colour are the same, except that the yellow is clearer. The only difficulty I feel in establishing the identity of this species from Amsterdam Island with the Australian one, is the presence of this yellow colour on the breast and sides of head, though, indeed, that is found on the young animal in the British Museum from North Australia, as noted above. But on that character only, I do not feel justified in making a new species, but would prefer to regard the A m sterdam specimen as a variety only, and wait for further information and more specimens. I observed very similar external characters in Professor Peters's beautiful Otaria gazella*, from Kerguelen's Land, which I saw at Berlin this summer ; but the skull was very different. While attempting to establish the identity of the two described Fur- Seals of Australia, I ought to mention that I find a competent colonial naturalist like Dr. Haast recording a second species as " Gypsophoca tropicalis, Little Fur-Seal" in his list of the bones found in the Sumner Moa-cave (Trans. N.Z. Inst. vii. p. 84). On the other hand, I think there can be no doubt that the species before us from New Zealand is identical with that with "the sharp pointed nose and the general colour of the hair approaching to black," seen by Flinders iu Bass's Straits. If this be really the case, namely that the Fur- Seal of Tasmania is identical with that of N e w Zealand, it is more than probable that that of the Nuyts archipelago and the rest of the south coast of Australia ought to be referred to the same species. W e now come to Peron's Otaria albicollis. I venture to suggest that this large Otaria with a white spot on the back of the neck can be no other than Gray's Neophoca lobata, figured by Gould, 'Mammals of Australia,' iii. 49, and Quoy and Gaimard's Ctaria australis (Voyage de 1'Astrolabe, Zoologie, i. p. 95, pl. 14). The young skull, figured by Gray in his 'Spicilegia Zoologica,' plate iv. fig. 1, when establishing the species, has the peculiar characters of O. australis which I have observed in the type specimens preserved in the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes, Paris. The most striking of these is the rounded form of the upper surface of the skull between and behind the orbits, which is so marked as to give it a strong resemblance, when viewed sideways, to that of Ursus labiatus. The skull of Gray's Neophoca lobata (figured, Hand-list, plate xxx.), which is of a very old animal, shows this peculiar shape extremely well, and also the remarkably broad recurved orbital processes of the frontals. Indeed Dr. Gray himself seems to have regarded the two species as identical (I. c. p. 43). The specimens at Paris that can unquestionably be referred to this species are three skulls (Nos. 1502, 1532, and 1533) and one skeleton, not adult, all brought by the 'Astrolabe,' and one skull (No. 1535) brought by the 'Bonite.' The number of the molars, on which Dr. Gray lays great stress (I. c. p. 41), is clearly not so constant as in others, but still normal more often than the reverse. The skeleton has m. ~ ; nos. 1502 and 1533, m. ~ . * Described by him in the ' Monatsbericht der k. Akad. der Wissenschaften zu Berlin,' June 10, 1875. |
