156 The Scottish Naturalist. 



doubt to P. barbata. This seems, however, to have been 

 mainly caused by the appearance of " Bell's Brit. Quadrupeds." 

 Backie and Heddle « include both the Great Seal P. barbata, 

 and the Grey Seal H. grypus in the Orkney fauna ; whether 

 they had themselves examined what they believed to be 

 examples of the former is not apparent. In the case of the 

 latter, they state that Macgillivray had seen two individuals of 

 this species killed in Orkney ; and they notice a large seal in 

 the Kirkwall museum, which they consider agrees in most 

 respects with the description of that animal. They also include 

 the Greenland Seal, P. grcenlandica, amongst the Orkney 

 animals. The chief evidence they seem to have relied in this 

 was the skull of the Greenland Seal figured by Home in the 

 "Philosophical Transactions," 1822. Home stated that the 

 drawings of the three skulls that he figured at that time were 

 made for Hunter thirty years ago, and that the seal whose skull 

 is figured on plate 28 (the Greenland Seal) was shot near the 

 Orkney Islands. In this he was evidently mistaken, as it was the 

 Grey Seal whose skull he figured on the preceding plate, and 

 which he stated was from the South Seas, that was shot in 

 Orkney. 



According to Professor Owen 2 the seal in question was pre- 

 sented to Hunter by a Mr Oxendon, probably the gentleman 

 who went two years to Orkney for the purpose of shooting it. 

 Home's skull of the grey seal affords probably the earliest un- 

 doubted evidence we possess of the occurrence of that animal 

 in the British seas nearly a century ago. The skull was not 

 identified as such, I believe, until Ball 3 had clearly proved, 

 from skulls he procured on the Irish coast, that one of the large 

 seals of that country, at any rate, was H. grypus and not P. 

 barbata as had been supposed. After the publication of the 

 first edition of Bell's British Quadrupeds, containing a figure 

 and description of the Grey Seal, and stating that Ball recognised 

 in Donovan's seal in the British Museum a badly stuffed speci- 

 men of H. grypus, it seems, in the main, to have been taken 

 for granted that every large seal observed on our coasts pertained 

 to that species. 



In 1 84 1 Selby's 4 paper on the large seals of the Fame Islands 

 appeared. In this he states that the great seal of these Islands, 



1 Nat. Hist, of Orkney. 2 Cat. Osteological Coll. of Surgeons. 

 3 Trans. Irish Academy, vol. 18, 4 Annals Nat. Hist., 1841. 



