GENERAL HISTORY. 295 



fully accepted Peters's reference of it to the Zalophus gillespii. 

 Peters himself first (in 18G7) referred the species (except the 

 figure of the young skulls) to ZalopJius lobatm, which were as- 

 signed to Arctocephalus cinercus, but later, as above stated, he 

 identified it with Zaloplnis gUlespii.* 



The references to this species are still very few. Aside from 

 Choris's account, and Lesson's (based on Choris's) and Fischer's 

 (based on Lesson's) and Temmiuck's, the first of importance is 

 M'Bain's description of a skull from California in 1858, which 

 specimen was redescribed and figured from a cast by Gray, in 

 1859. Dr. Gray, as late as 1871, t appears to have seen only this 

 specimen, but in 1874f cites (without full description) a "skull 

 from Japan. Aside from this its Japan record still rests 

 wholly on Dr. Peters's determination of "Schlegel's" (/. e., 

 Temminck'sll) specimens in the Leyden Museum. Dr. Gill, in 

 1806, had examined a skull from California in the museum of 

 the Smithsonian Institution, which led him to separate the 

 species generically from the other Eared Seals. This skull, 

 and another (belonging to the museum of the Chicago Acad- 

 emy of Sciences), also from California, I was able to describe in 

 detail in 1870. ]\ These Californian skulls are the only ones thus 

 far described, ** but Scammon, in his " Marine Mammalia," under 

 the name li Eumetopias stelleri," has given detailed measure- 



*Monatsb. der Akad. der Wissensch. zu Berlin, 1866, (1867), pp. 272, 276, 

 668. 



tSuppl. Cat. Seals and Whales, p. 28. 



I Hand-List of Seals, p. 41. 



$ "1589&. Skull, 12 inches long, with canines very large ; no other teeth ; 

 no lower jaw ; frontal crest very high. Japan, 73. 3. 12. 1." 



|| Dr. Peters cites Schlegel as the author of that part of the "Fauna Ja- 

 ponica" relating to the Mammals, although published as "par C. J. Tem- 

 miuck." Misled by Peters, I made, the same error in my paper on the 

 Eared Seals, published in 1870. 



H They were not figured in the regular edition of my paper on the Eared 

 Seals (Bull. Mus. Cornp. Zool., vol. ii, No. 1), biit two photographic plates, 

 representing both specimens, were added to afewof the author's copies (about 

 twenty-five), which were sent to some of the more prominent workers in this 

 field. These interpolated plates have been referred to by Dr. Gray (Hartd- 

 List of Seals, p. 42) as though they formed a part of the original work. 



** During the last year, I may here add, as an indication of the amount of 

 material relating to this species now accessible, that I have examined not 

 less than a dozen skins, representing adults of both sexes, and young of 

 various ages from a fcetal specimen upward, and more than twenty skulls, 

 likewise embracing young, even with the milk dentition, and both sexes of 

 various ages, aud two complete skeletons. 



