684 GENUS HALICHOERUS. 



1777,* supposing it to have been based on the Phoca yrypus 

 of Fabricius. Dr. Gill does not appear to have anywhere given 

 reasons for this interpretation. In Johnson's "Cyclopedia," as 

 above cited, he simply calls the Gray Seal " Pusa (Halichcerus) 

 grypus", which is doubtless to be interpreted as Pusa ( Hali- 

 cli&rus) yrypus. Dr. Coues, however, has had occasion to con- 

 sider Pusa in relation to its use by Oken, in 1816, as a generic 

 designation for the Sea Otter. In referring to this point Dr. Coues 

 observes: "Pusa had, however, already been used by another 

 writer in connection with a genus of Seals now commonly 

 known as Halicliccrus, but in such a peculiar way as to raise 

 one of those technical questions of synonymy which authors 

 interpret differently, in absence of fixed rule. Scopoli based 

 his Pusa upon a figure of Salomon [ter/e Philipp Ludwig Statins] 

 Mliller's, recognizable with certainty as Halichcerus, and gave 

 characters utterly irreconcilable with those of this animal. 

 This is the whole case. Now it may be argued that there being- 

 no such animal whatever as Scopoli says his Pusa was, his name 

 drops out of the system, and Pusa of Oken, virtually an en- 

 tirely new term, is tenable for something else, namely, for the 

 Sea Otter. On the other hand, Scopoli's quotations show ex- 



1765, p. 1(31). The same form of the word is used by Schreber (Siiugth., 

 Theil iii, p. 285). Erxlebeu (Syst. Reg. Aniui., 1777, p. 586) gives Purse and 

 Eassigiak as the Greeulandic names of Phoca vitiilina. Fabricius, in 1790 

 (Skrivter af Naturhistorie-Selskabet, Bd. i, Hefte 1, 1790, p. 90 and foot- 

 note 30), gives Puirse in his text as one of the Greeulandic names of the 

 Harp Seal, and iu a footnote gives a further account of th<3 word. He 

 says : Pua, as written by Cranz, and after him by Schreber, is erroneous, 

 this word meaning a lung. But Puse, or Piiese, as Professor Glahn (Auma-r- 

 kninger til Crauzes Hist., p. 150) corrected it, is not wholly right. Like- 

 wise incorrect is Anderson's Pusa in his " Efterr. orn Strat-Davis, LV". It 

 is from here that Scopoli learned the name Pusa as he has used it for his 

 supposed new genus of animals, which, however, is nothing more than a 

 species of Seal (see Beschaft. fieri. Ges. Naturs., IV, B., p. 464). 



It thus appears that the name Pusa, with its various orthographic forms, 

 was originally simply a generic term for Seals in general, the Greenlandic 

 equivalent of the Latin Phoca, the English Seal, etc. In view of this is it 

 improbable that the pigeon-term "Pussy," said to be commonly employed 

 by the northern sailors and sealers of various nationalities for young Seals 

 in the white coat, may not be a corruption of the Greenlandic Psa? 



* See Johnson's New Universal Cyclopedia, vol. iii, 1877, p. 1226. He 

 also employed the name in the same sense in 1876 in his anonymous "List 

 of the Principal Useful or Injurious Mammals" of North America. For an 

 account of the last-named publication see antea, p. 22. 



