86 ANNALS OF SCOTTISH NATURAL HISTORY 



remarking "that had a specimen of such a striking beast 

 been procured, it is more than likely that some special notice 

 would have been taken of it." The late Mr. Alston, in his 

 " Mammalia of the Fauna of Scotland," published by the 

 Natural History Society of Glasgow in 1880, states on the 

 authority of Mr. Howard Saunders that the " Bladder Nose ' : 

 is well known as a visitor to the Ve Skerries in Shetland. 

 Under these circumstances, it is perhaps interesting to place 

 another record of the occurrence on our Scottish shores of 

 this rare seal. 



In the summer of last year one of my correspondents, 

 Mr. Ranald Macdonald, lately schoolmaster at Loch 

 Uiskevagh, Benbecula, and to whom I am indebted for 

 valuable assistance in other subjects, wrote me that he had 

 secured " a very beautiful seal-skin" for me, and judging from 

 the tone of his letter that it was not a common one, I wrote 

 him to send it on together with the skull and any other 

 bones which mia;ht be obtainable. The skin reached me in 

 due course together with the skull, which was all that had 

 been preserved of the animal, and on subsequent inquiry, I 

 learned that it had been killed by a man about the end of 

 May last, in Loch Uiskevagh. I was extremely sorry that 

 it had not been skinned in such a manner as to fit it for a 

 mounted specimen, the skin of the head and the flippers 

 having been cut off, but from an examination of the skull it 

 was evidently a young Hooded Seal. The skin as it stands 

 measures 3 ft. 4 in. in length and 2 ft. 3 in. in breadth, so 

 that the animal would probably be from 4 ft. 6 in. to 5 ft. 

 in total length. The hair above is rather long, silky in 

 texture, of a silvery-gray colour, and has a close underlying 

 fur of a light brown shade, the sides and underparts yellowish 

 white. The skull is 6\ in. in length and 4^ in. in greatest 

 breadth, flat in appearance, the height of the cranium (exclu- 

 sive of the lower jaw) being 3^ inches. The dental formula 



2 2 1 1 ^ — ^ 



is inc. ; can. • molars - = 30. The incisors 



1-1 i-i' 5-5 



and canines are slightly incurved, the surfaces of the former 

 grooved or plaited, the two upper and outer ones being about 

 one-third less than the canines, these latter having on their 

 inner surfaces two strong ridges or plaits. The first and 



