248 EUMETOPIAS STELLERI STELLEE's SEA LION. 



GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. The known range of this 

 species extends along the west coast of North America from 

 the Faralloue Islands, in latitude 37 40' N., to the Prybilov 

 Islands. Its northern limit of distribution is not definitely 

 known, but it does not appear to have been met with north of 

 about the latitude of St. Matthew's Island (about latitude 61). 

 Neither Mr. W. H. Ball nor Mr. H. W. Elliott has met with it 

 above this point, and they have both informed me that they 

 have no reason to suppose it extends any further northward 

 or beyond the southern limit of floating ice. According to 

 Steller, it existed in his time along the whole eastern coast of 

 Kamtchatka and southward to the Kurile Islands. He found 

 it abundant on Behring's and Copper Islands, where it is still 

 well known to exist. If Dr. Gray's Eumetopias elongatus, as 

 originally described in 1873 (the same specimen was referred by 

 him in 1872 to E. stelleri), be referable, as I believe (see infra, 

 p. 252) to the female of E. stelleri, the range of this species ap- 

 pears to extend southward on the Asiatic coast as far as 

 Japan. 



Although the Sea Lions of the California coast that have of 

 late years attracted so much attention appear to be the smaller 

 species (Zalopluis caUfornianus), the occurrence of the present 

 species there is also fully established, where it is resident the 

 whole year, and where it brings forth its young, as proven by 

 specimens transmitted some years since by Dr. Ayres to the 

 Smithsonian Institution. 



GENERAL HISTORY. The Northern Sea Lion was first de- 

 scribed in 1751 by Steller, who, under the name of Leo marinus, 

 gave a somewhat detailed account of its habits and its geograph- 

 ical range, so far as known to him. His description of the an- 

 imal, however, is quite unsatisfactory. Steller's Leo marinus, 

 in size, general form, and color, closely resembles the Southern 

 Sea Lion (Otaria jubata), with which Steller's animal was con- 

 founded by Pennant, Buffon, and by nearly all subsequent 

 writers for almost a century. Peron, in 1816, first distinctly 

 affirmed the Northern and Southern Sea Lions to be specifically 

 distinct, without, as Temminck says, *' avoir vu ni 1'une ni 1'autre, 

 et sans etablir leurs caracteres distiuctifs.' 7 * Lesson, in 1828, 

 gave it the specific name it now bears, in honor of Steller, its 

 first describer. The following year Fischer, on the authority of 



* Faun. Jap., Mam. Harms, 1842, p. 7. 



