GENERAL HISTORY. 249 



Lesson, also recognized its distinctness from the southern spe- 

 cies. ISTilsson, in 1840, in his celebrated monograph of the Seals, 

 reunited them. Miiller, however, in an appendix to Dr. W. 

 Peters's translation of Nilssou's essay, published in the Archiv 

 fur jSaturg'eschichte for 1841, separated it again, and pointed 

 out some of the differences in the skulls that serve to distin- 

 guish the two species. Gray, in his Catalogue of the Seals, 

 published in 1850, also regarded it as distinct. But one is led 

 to infer that he had not then seen specimens of it, and that he 

 rested his belief in the existence of such a species mainly on 

 Stellers account of it, as he himself expressly states in his 

 later papers. The skull received subsequently at the British 

 Museum from Monterey, California, and figured and described by 

 Gray, in 1859, as a new species, under the name Arctocephalus 

 moteriensis 7 proved, however, to be of this species, as first 

 affirmed by Dr. Gill, and later by Professor Peters and by Gray 

 himself. With the exception of the figures of an imperfect 

 skull of Steller's Sea Lion from Kamtchatka, given by Pander 

 and D' Alton in 182G, Dr. Gray's excellent figure* (a view in 

 profile) is the only one of its skull published prior to 187G. The 

 only specimens of the animal extant, up to about ten years 

 since, in the European museums, seem to have consisted of the 

 two skulls and a stuffed skin in the Berlin Museum mentioned 

 by Peters, and the skull in the British Museum figured and 

 described by Gray. 



TVith the Monterey skull above mentioned, Dr. Gray received 

 another very young skull, and the skin of a Fur Seal, both of 

 which were said to have belonged to one animal, and which he 

 hesitatingly referred to his Arctocephalua mont&rien8is.\ Later, 

 however, he regarded them as representing a new species,! 

 which he called Arctoceplialus California-nils. Still later he refer- 

 red his A. calif orniamiy to Eumetopias stelleri (=Arctocepkalus 

 monteriensis, Gray, of earlier date), and in 1872 1| published figures 

 of this young California skull. Concerning the skin above re- 

 ferred to he remarked at one time as follows: "If the skin sent 

 last year by Mr. Taylor to Mr. Gurney, and by that gentleman 

 presented to the Museum, is the young of this species [A. mon- 



* Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1859, pi. Ixii. 

 tProc. Zool. Soc. Loud., 1859, p. 358. 

 tCat. Seals and Whales, 1866, p. 49. 



Anu. and Mag. Xat. Hist,, 3d series, 1866, vol. xviii, p. 233; Hand- 

 List of Seals, etc., 1874, 40. 



|| Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1872, pp. 740,741. 



