MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY. 87 



naturalists for a long time generally confounded them. Peron, in 1816, 

 first claimed that they were distinct, but no specimens seem to have 

 readied European museums till some years later. Dr. Gray, writing 

 in 1859, remarks as follows: " I had not been able to see a specimen 

 of this species in any of the museums which I examined on the Con- 

 tinent or in England, or to find a skull of the genus [Arctocephalus] 

 from the North Pacific Ocean, yet I felt so assured, from Steller's 

 description and the geographical position, that it must be distinct from 

 the eared fur seals from the Antarctic Ocean and Australia, with which 

 it had usually been confounded, that in my ' Catalogue of Seals in the 

 Collection of the British Museum' [1850] I regarded it as a distinct 

 species, under the name of Arctocephalus ursinus, giving an abridgment 

 of Steller's description as its specific character." "The British Mu- 

 seum," he adds, " has just received, under the name Otaria leonina, 

 from Amsterdam, a specimen [skull and skin] of the sea bear from 

 Behring's Straits, which was obtained from St. Petersburg" * ; which 

 is the specimen already spoken of as figured by Dr. Gray. From the 

 great differences existing between this skull and those of the southern 

 sea bears, Dr. Gray separated the northern species from the genus 

 Arctocephalus, under the name Callorhinus.^ 



Although there were two skulls of Steller's sea bear in the Berlin 

 Museum as early as 1841,+ and three skeletons of the same species in 

 the Museum of Munich in 18-19, § Dr. Gray seems to have been the 

 first naturalist who was able to compare this animal with its southern 

 relatives, and hence to positively decide its affinities. 



Misled by a label accompanying specimens of eared seals received 

 at the British Museum from California, a skin of the Callorhinus ursi- 

 nus was doubtfully described by this author, in the paper in which the 

 name Callorhinus was proposed, as that of his Arctocephalus monterien- 

 sis, which is a hair seal. This skin was accompanied by a young skull, 

 purporting, by the label it bore, to belong to it, but Dr. Gray observes 

 that otherwise he should have thought it too small to have belonged 

 to the same animal. Seven years later, || however, he described the 



* Proc. London Zool. Soc, 1859, p. 102. 



t Ibid., p. 359. 



X Archiv fur Naturgeschichte, etc , 1841, p. 334. 



§ Ibid., 1849, p. 39. 



|| Cat. Seals and Whales, 1S66, p. 51. 



