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Show 776 DR. J. E. GRAY ON THE [ Dec. 2, 4. On the Skulls of Japanese Seals, with the Description of a New* Species, Eumetopias elongatus. B y Dr. J. E. G R A Y , F.R.S. &c. [Received October 28, 1873.] The British Museum has recently received from Mr. Arthur Adams's collection two specimens of skulls of Seals from Japan. The first is a young specimen of an Eared Seal, and was taken for, and believed to be the young of, a Seal of which I described and figured the skull in the P. Z. S. 1872, p. 738, figs. 2 and 3, which we received from Mr. Gerrard, jun., as coming from Japan, but which he now informs me was obtained from Mr. Arthur Adams's collection. It is evidently the young of the same species, though the older specimen, like the skulls which we have got of Eumetopias stelleri from California, have a space between the fourth and sixth teeth, as if a tooth were absent, as I observed in m y description of the genus. The young skull now received has a fifth tooth present, and chiefly differs from the genus Gypsophoca from the South Seas in the fifth and sixth teeth not being so distinctly behind the front part of the zygomatic arch as in that genus. The reception of the young skull from Japan makes it very doubtful if the species of Eumetopias from that coast is the same as the true Eumetopias stelleri from the N.W. coast of America; for both the old and young skulls are very much narrower, compared with their length, and especially the skull of the elder animal. The orbits are smaller. The skulls of the young animals are the most distinct; for the skull of the young animal from Japan is solid and much more developed than the much larger young skull from California, in the Museum, figured in the P. Z. S. 1872, p. 740, figs. 4 and 5, where the great width of the zygomatic arch and the very large size of the orbit are most striking, and the skull is very light and thin, and, like the teeth, very imperfectly developed. These differences are too great, I think, to be sexual; therefore I am inclined to think that there are two species of the genus Eumetopias. 1. EUMETOPIAS STELLERI. Eumetopias stelleri, Gray, Suppl. Cat. Seals and Whales, p. 30; P. Z. S. 1872, p. 740, figs. 4 & 5 (skull, young) ; Allen, Bull. Comp. Anat. and Zool. vol. ii. p. 44, t. 1 & 2 (skulls). Arctocephalus monteriensis, Gray, P. Z. S. 1859, p. 358, t. 72 (skull). A. californianus, Gray, Cat. Seals and Whales, 1866, p. 51 (skull only of young). N.W. Coast of America ; California ; Behring's Straits. 2. EUMETOPIAS ELONGATUS. (Figs. 1 and 2, pp. 777, 778.) E. stelleri, Gray, P. Z. S. 1872, p. 738, figs. 2 & 3 (skull, nearly adult). |
