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Show 206 MR. R. B. SHARPE ON ANTHUS CERVINUS. [A-Pr- 1> Professor Flower exhibited four skulls of the Common Bottle-nose Whale (Hyperoodon rostratus) of the Northern Seas, exhibiting the progressive development with age of the maxillary crests in the male sex, as described in the Proceedings of the Society for 1883, p. 722. They were all from animals caught by Captain David Gray, and presented by him to the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. No. 1. Skull of a male foetus (No. 2897, Cat. Osteology, Mus. Roy. Coll. Surg. pt. ii. 1884), taken from the uterus of its mother, caught in May 1883 in 68° 43' N. lat., 11° W . long. The animal measured 10 feet 11 inches in length. The cranium was 67 cm. long from the occipital condyles to the apex of the rostrum, and the maxillary crests were so little developed as to rise only 6 cm. above the level of the contiguous premaxillary bones. No. 2. Skull of a young male (No. 2896). From an animal 16 feet in length, taken by the side of its mother, and which had only milk in its stomach. The cranium was 71 cm. in length, with maxillary crests 16*5 cm. high. No. 3. Skull of an older male (No. 2895), supposed by Captain Gray to be about one vear old. It was 19 feet 6 inches in length, and had been caught July 9, 1883, in 71° 19' N.lat, 6° 5' W . long. The cranium was 134 cm. in length, and the crests 24 cm. high. No. 4. Skull of an adult male (No. 2894). From an animal taken in the North Atlantic, between Iceland and Jan Mayen Island, in the summer of 1881. The cranium was 180 cm. in length, and the maxillary crests 46 cm. high, rising considerably above the occipital crest, and so thick as to approach very closely to each other in the middle line. This was the form described by Gray under the name of Hyperoodon latifrons, and afterwards Lagenocetus latifrons ; but the type specimen, now in the British Museum, was from a still older animal, the crests being both higher and more massive. Professor Flower also exhibited a mass of pure spermaceti obtained by Messrs. Langton and Bicknell from the "head-matter" of Hyperoodons killed by Captain Gray, thus corroborating the observation of Chemnitz quoted in the paper referred to above. Mr. Sclater exhibited specimens of the eggs of two species of Testudinata recently laid by animals living in the Society's Gardens, viz. Testudo elephantopus and Chelys matamata. Both were pure white and nearly circular in form, the former measuring 1*8 inch and the latter 1*5 inch in diameter. Mr. R. Bowdler Sharpe exhibited and made remarks on a Red-throated Pipit (Anthus cervinus), caught near Brighton in March last and now in the collection of Mr. T. J. Monk, at Lewes. Mr. Sharpe exhibited at the same time an example of the true Water- Pipit (Anthus spinoletta), captured at Lancing, in Sussex, in March 1877, from the collection of Mr. F. Nicholson. |