TECHNICAL HISTORY SPECIES. 429 



In 1778 Lepecliin* described two species of Seals under the 

 names Phoca occanica and Phoca leporina. The first is unques- 

 tionably the Phoca groenlandica of Fabricius and Erxleben, while 

 the other is usually regarded as having been based on the 

 young of the Phoca barbata of the same authors, although in 

 both cases the incisors are described as four in each jaw. 



The following year (1779) appeared Hermann's elaborate me- 

 moir t (of fifty pages and two plates) on the Monk Seal ("Miinchs- 

 Eobbe, Phoca monachus") of the Mediterranean Sea the 

 first explicit account of the species, and a, very admirable mon- 

 ograph for this early date. 



The next year (1780) Fabricius published his "Fauna Groau- 

 laudica," in which all the Seals named in Miiller's "Prodromus" 

 are quite satisfactorily described, under the names there first 

 proposed. He, however, erroneously includes among the Seals 

 of Greenland Steller's Sea Bear, under the name Phoca ursina, 

 and concludes his account of the Greenland Seals by mention- 

 ing four other marine animals he had heard of from the Green- 

 landers, but of which he had never seen either skins or skulls, 

 and of which he knew nothing with certainty, namely Singuktop, 

 Imab-ukallia, Atarpiak, and Kongeseteriak.^ 



In 1780, in his "Synopsis der Quadrupedeii" (Geographische 

 Geschichte, etc., Theil ii, pp. 419-423), Ziniinermaun gave the 

 same species that Erxleben did in 1777, and under the same 

 names. In 1782, however, in an appendix to the "Synopsis" 

 (ibid., Theil iii, 1782, pp. 276-278), he added three species under 

 "Phoca," two of them based on Pennant's "History of Quad- 

 rupeds," published in 1781, as follows: 1. "Phoca australis. 

 Falkland Seal Pennant ii, 521"; 2. " Phoca fasciata. Eubbon 

 Seal Pennant ii, p. 523"; 3. Phoca leporina, Lepech. The first 

 two are for the first time named; the first, however, is an 

 Otary. Zimmermaun also says, "Le phoque a Ventre blanc, 

 Buffon Suppl. vi, pi. 44, p. 310, ist wohl Phoca monacJius"-, yet 

 subsequent writers of less discrimination held it for a distinct 

 species. 



Buffon, in 1782, in the sixth volume of the " Supplement" of his 

 "Histoire naturelle," recognized eight species of "Les Phoques 

 sans oreilles on Phoques proprement dits" (some of which, 



*Act. Acad. Sci. Imp. Petrop., i, 1777 (1778), pp. 259,264, pll. vi-ix. 

 tBerschaft. d. Berlinische Gesselschaft naturf. Freunde, Band iv, 1779, 

 pp. 456-509, pll. xii, xiii (external characters), 

 t Respecting these see postca, pp. 432,433. 



