94 Mr. Ball on the Species of Seals inhabiting the Irish Seas. 



then makes a plunge headforemost, and on the bird escaping, exhibits very 

 evidently its disappointment.* 



A specimen similar to that just described was killed with small shot in the 

 river Liffey, not far from the Custom-house, by one of the Coast Guard Service, 

 on the 23rd of October last. In its stomach were some half-digested fish, which 

 appeared to be the sand launce, (Ammodytcs Lancea.) I have been informed 

 that seals are not unfrequent in this river, whither they are supposed to follow 

 herrings. 



I perceive Mr. Bell quotes Professor Nilsson as authority for a " character 

 of unerring certainty" in this species, (Phoca Vitulina,) which consists in the 

 obliquet direction of the molar teeth. I must however observe, that the obli- 

 quity of the teeth is consequent on the insufficient development of the jaws in 

 early life ; it is even observable in the very young Halichoerus, and disappears in 

 Phoca Vitulina long before the skull attains its maximum size ; it cannot there- 

 fore be held as a specific character. Mr. Bell has very properly retained the 

 name of Vitulina, which was changed by Nilsson to Variegata, on the grounds 

 that three species had been confounded under it, but that now described is cer- 

 tainly the one for which the appellation was originally designed. 



Doctor Riley of Bristol exhibited at the Meeting of the British Association, 

 the skeleton of a seal which was killed in the Severn, and had passed under the 

 name of Phoca Vitulina. I perceived that it differed from any I had before seen, 

 and Professor Nilsson being appealed to, pronounced it to be his Phoca Annel- 

 lata. This species has been referred by Mr. Bell to the Phoca GrcEulandica, and 

 Professor Nilsson, on further examination, concurred in this opinion. I am how- 

 ever compelled to express dissent, on the grounds that the teeth in the skull of 

 the seal killed in the Severn are broader, and their tubercles more deeply divided 

 from each other ; that the lambdoid suture is less rudelycrested, and the ridges 

 running from the nasal, and almost bisecting the parietal bones, are less conspi- 

 cuous than in the true Phoca Groenlandica ; and further, that the seal just 

 alluded to is a tolerably large species, while that of the Severn is evidently a 



* This animal died in March suddenly, after six months confinement ; it was apparently thriving, 

 and became daily more familiar. 



■)" Since writing this I have seen the skeletons of several species of seal at the Jardin des Plantes 

 at Paris, and the obliquity of the teeth was less conspicuous in Vitulina, than in many others. 



