190 FAMILY OTAKIID^E. 



" thick under-fur" ! In his latest notice of the species (iu 1874) his 

 synonymy of the species shows that he still believed the skin 

 of a young CallorMnus ursinus, referred in 1866 to his Arctoce- 

 plialus monteriensiSj belonged to this species, although in 1871* 

 he properly assigned it to CallorMnus ursinus, which I had 

 shown in 1870 was its proper allocation. 



Dr. Gill, in 1871,t made two primary divisions of the family, the 

 genus Zaloplms alone constituting one division, which was thus 

 contrasted with all the others. The characters cited as the basis 

 of this division are the rostral profile (whether " more or less 

 decurved," or "straight or incurved") and the sagittal crest. 

 The last distinction was based wholly on a misapprehension 

 of the facts in the case,! an( l the nrs ^ proves to be open to very 

 obvious exceptions. Although Dr. Gill, in his later papers on 

 this group, retains these divisions as originally proposed by 

 him, he has adduced no additional characters in support of 

 them. 



GENERA. The first generic division of the Eared Seals was 

 made by F. Cuvier in 1824, who separated them as "Arctoce- 

 phales" (Arctocephalus) and "Platyrhinques" (Platyrliinclms), 

 with "Pkoca ursina" (= Arctoccplialus delalandi, F. Cuvier; A. 

 antarcticus, Gray) as the type of the former and u Phoca leonina" 

 (= Otaria jubata of recent authors) as the type of the latter. Suc- 

 ceeding writers very generally adopted the name Arctoceplialm 

 for the greater part of the species, while Platyrliinclms was con- 

 sidered as equivalent to Otaria of Peron, of prior date. Otaria 

 has, by some writers, even down to the present time, been used 

 in a generic sense for all the species of the family, sometimes 

 with and sometimes without subgeneric divisions. In 1859, Gray 

 separated generically the* Northern Fur Seal from ArctocepJialus 

 under the name CallorMnus^ and the group has been since very 

 generally recognized as of generic or subgeneric value. Prior 

 to this date the only commonly recognized genera were Otaria 

 and Arctoceplialus. The next generic subdivisions of the Ota- 

 ries were instituted by Gill in 1866, || namely, Eumetopias and 

 Zaloplms , the former having for its type and only species the 

 Northern Sea Lion, or Leo marinus of SteUer, while the latter 



* Suppl. Cat. Seals and Whales, p. 15. 



tAmer. Nat., vol. iv, Jan., 1871, p. 681. 



t See Am. Nat., vol. v, Marcli, 1871, p. 41. 



Me"m. cluMus. d'Hist. Nat., vol. si, 1824, 205. 



|| Proc. Esses Institute, vol. v, pp. 1-13, March, 1866. 



