52 NATURAL HISTOliY OF AQUATIC ANIMALS. 



mainly on Steller's notes, 1 but it embraces a few particulars not given in "De Bestiis Marinis." 

 Steller's description of the habits of this animal has been largely quoted by Buffou, Pennant, 

 Schrebcr, Hamilton, and other general writers. 



Buffon, Pennant, Schreber, Gmelin, and nearly all writers on the Pinnipeds, down to about 

 1820, confounded the northern Pur Seal with the Fur Seals of the Southern Hemisphere, blending 

 their history as that of a single species. Pe"ron, in 1816, first recognized it as distinct from its 

 southern allies, as it was so treated somewhat later by Deruarest, Lesson, Fischer, Gray, and other 

 systematic writers, 2 but its distinctive characters were not clearly set forth till 1859, when Dr. ,1. 

 E. Gray described and figured its skull, and' showed that the northern species was not even con- 

 generic with the Sea Bears of the south. Very few specimens of either the northern or southern 

 Sea Bears appear to have reached European museums prior to about that date, so that naturalists 

 had not previously been able to make a direct comparison of this species with any of its southern 

 affiues. Dr. Gray, in referring to this point in 1859, wrote as follows: "I had not beeu able to see 

 a specimen of this species in any of the museums which I examined on the Continent or in England, 

 or to find a skull of the genus [Arctocephalus] from the North Pacific Ocean, yet I felt so assured, 

 from Ste'ler's description and the geographical position, that it must be distinct from the Eared 

 Fur Seals from the Antarctic Ocean and Australia, with which it had usually been confounded, 

 that in my 'Catalogue of Seals in the Collection of the British Museum' [1850] I regarded it as a 

 distinct species, under the name of Arctocephalus ursinits, giving an abridgment of Steller's descrip 

 tioii as its specific character." "The British Museum," he adds, "has just received, under the name 

 Otaria leonina, from Amsterdam, a specimen [skull and skin] of the Sea Bear from Bering's Straits, 

 which was obtained from Saint Petersburg"; 3 which is the specimen already spoken of as figured 

 by Dr. Gray. From the great differences existing between this skull and those of the Southern Sea 

 Bears, Dr. Gray, a few weeks later, separated the northern species from the genus Arctocephalus, 

 under the name Callorhinus.* 



It seems, however, that there were two skulls of Steller's Sea Bear in the Berlin Museum as 

 early as 1841, 5 and three skeletons of the same species in the Museum of Munich in 1849, e yet 

 Dr. Gray appears to have been the first to compare this animal with its southern relatives, and to 

 positively decide its affinities. 



Misled, however, by erroneous information respecting specimens of Eared Seals received at the 

 British Museum from California, a skin of the Callorhinus ursinus was doubtfully described by this 

 author, in the paper in which the name Callorhinus was proposed, as that of his Arctocephalus 

 monteriensis, which is a Hair Seal. This skin was accompanied by a young skull, purporting, by the 

 label it bore, to belong to it, but Dr. Gray observes that otherwise he should have thought it too 

 small to have belonged to the same animal. Seven years later, 7 he described the skull as that of 

 a new species (Arctocephalus californianus), still associating with it, however, the skin of the 



'Krascheninikow, it is stated, "received all of Mr. Steller's papers" to aid him in the preparation of his "History 

 of Kamtchatka." 



2 Nilsson and Miiller in 1841, anil Wagner in 1846 and 1849, on the other hand, still considered all the Sea Bears 

 as belonging to a single species. Wagner, in 1849 (Arch, fiir Natiug., 1849, pp. 37-49) described the osteological char- 

 acters of the northern species from three skeletons in the Munich Museum received from Bering's Sea. One of these 

 was apparently that of a full-grown female; a second was believed to be that of a half-grown male, while the third 

 belonged to a very young animal, in which the permanent teeth were still not wholly developed. Wagner compares 

 the species with Steller's Sea Lion, and with the figures of the skulls of the southern Sea Bears given by F. Cuvier, 

 Blainville, and Qimy and Gaimard, and notes various differences in the form of the teeth and skull, but believes that 

 these differences must be regarded as merely variations dependent upon age. 



:1 Gl!AY, .1. E., iii the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 1859, p. W2. 



^GRAV, J. E., in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 185'J, p. 359. 



'See Archiv fiir Natnrgesch., 1841, p. 334. 



6 GltAY, J. K., in the Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, 849, p. 39. 



'GRAY, J. E., Catalogue of the Seals and Whales in the British Museum, 1866, p. 51. 



