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Show 1873.] SEALS OF THE AUCKLAND ISLANDS. 759 Museum, whence it passed into that of Mr. Parkinson on the south side of Blackfriars Bridge, and, together with the very bad figures of it to be seen in their works, formed the basis of the descriptions of Shaw and Desmarest. It may very likely turn out that this is the young of Euotaria nigrescens, as a young male, identified with that species, was taken near Port Famine during the voyage of the ' Adventure' and ' Beagle' *, and the male pups of the southern Fur-Seal are said to be of a light brown colour when they are a few months old f. It remains for me to say a few words on Dr. Gray's genus Gypsophoca. Dr. Hector published, in the ' Transactions of the New-Zealand Institute' for 1871, a description of two skulls of Seals, one adult from Milford Sound, on the E. coast of the S. island of New Zealand, the other a young skull from the Auckland Islands. He regarded them as identical, and identified them with Arctocephalus cinereus, the Fur-Seal of New Zealand. Dr. Gray very properly distinguished them, and, while agreeing with Dr. Hector that the adult skull belonged to A. cinereus, made a new genus for the other, and called it Gypsophoca tropicalis, identifying with it a very young skull and a fragment of an older one brought from North Australia by Mr. John Macgillivray, and which are now in the British Museum. This is the skull figured by him (P. Z. S. 1872, p. 660) as from Auckland Island. Dr. Hector's figure is not very clearly drawn ; but, as far as I can make it out, I think that the general form of the skull, as well as that of the auditory bulla and mastoid process is very like the shape of those parts in m y younger female skull, and that it may very probably be a young 6. hookeri. Mr. Macgillivray's specimen I have compared with mine and with Dr. Hector's figure. With all submission to Dr. Gray I cannot think the two should be referred to the same species. The skull in the British Museum from North Australia is that of so young a specimen that it would be difficult, unless one had a very large series of skulls of different sexes and ages to compare it with, to determine its species with certainty, though I suspect it will turn out to be Arctocephalus cinereus. P.S. (Jan. 15, 1874).-Since reading the above I have had the opportunity, through the kindness of M . Alphonse Milne-Edwards and Professor Gervais, of examining the collections of the Museum of the Jardin des Plantes, Paris, where I thought it not unlikely that some specimens of Otariae, brought from the Aucklands by the Astrolabe-et-Zelee Expedition, might be preserved. In the osteological collection there is a broken skull, without the lower jaw, marked "Iles Auckland. Tete trouvee sur la plage par MM. Hombron et Jaquinot [they were the naturalists to the expedition]. L'expedition a rapporte deux squelettes et deux peaux du O. australis 1" The greatest length of this skull is 1 Of", the greatest width 5|"; and it corresponds exactly with the type of Arctocephalus * Captain King's Narrative, vol. i. p. 530. f Scott, I. s. c. p. 18. |