The Scottish Naturalist. 155 



grows to the length of twelve feet. In his voyage to the 

 Hebrides he was not fortunate enough to meet with this seal 

 himself, so that the size given must be from the report of others. 

 In his "Arctic Zoology," published some years after Fabricius' 

 " Fauna Grcenlandica " appeared, he includes under Phoca bar- 

 bata the large seal of the coast of Scotland, and Parsons' 

 London animal. The latter, it would seem, became the pro- 

 perty of Donovan, who also figured it in his " British Animals " 

 as P. barbata ; ultimately, at his death probably, it was depos- 

 ited in the British Museum, where it was long regarded as a 

 genuine specimen of P. barbata. 



After the publication of Pennant's " Arctic Zoology," it 

 appears to have been taken for granted, without further investi- 

 gation, that all the large seals of British waters were P. barbata. 

 This is the more remarkable, if we assume that none of them 

 were of that species; because, in 1790, Fabricius 1 published 

 figures of a number of the seals' skulls described by him, amongst 

 others were those of both P. barbata and H. grypus. And, in 

 182 1, Lichtenstein 2 described and figured a young example of H. 

 grypus, two or three specimens of which were driven ashore upon 

 ice during a storm on the Pomeranian coast. Two of these seals 

 were exhibited alive for some time by the fishermen in the 

 district, and one of these was taken to Berlin for that purpose. 

 He notices the surprise of the exhibitors when they saw the 

 animal, after it had been about a month in their possession, 

 rapidly changing the colour of its coat from a yellowish white 

 to that of a dusky spotted grey. 



Dr. A. Edmondston 3 gives an interesting account of the 

 Haaf-fish or Great Seal, as P. barbata, of the Zetland Islands 

 Amongst other particulars, he states that one which he saw 

 caught in a net struggled more than twenty-five minutes with- 

 out ever performing a single respiration, and when brought to 

 the surface was still alive. Dr. Fleming 4 throws no more light 

 on the matter. He gives the northern islands as the locality 

 where P. barbata is met with. It does not appear that he had 

 seen the seal himself, but refers to Maclean and Edmondston's 

 account of it. 



In Wilson's 5 paper on the habits of the Scottish Phocse, the 

 Tapvaist or great seal of the western islands is referred with 



1 Skrivter Naturhistorie Selskabet. 2 Akademie der Wissen. zu Berlin. 

 3 Zetland Islands. 4 British Animals. 5 Mag. Zoology and Botany, vol. 1. 



