46 VlIQCITiJE. 



Pallas described a small Seal from the Kurile Islands (Zool. llosso- 

 Asiat. i. 107), wliicli he regards as the same as Ja ■petite Fhoque of 

 Buffou (P. -pmiUa, Gmclin), under the name of P. nigra. 



Steller figures and describes a large Seal under the name of Ui-siis 

 marinus (Nov. Comm. Pctrop. ii. 331. t. 15), which is the authority 

 for the Ursine Seal of Pennant (Quad. ii. 526) and Phoca ursina of 

 Schreber, Gmelin, and most succeeding authors. 



Porster, in Cook's Second Voyage (ii. 203), appears to speak of 

 the same animal under the name of " Sea Bear." 



No specimen of this species existed in any of the Museums Avhich 

 I visited on the Continent or in England, nor could I find a skull of 

 the genus from the Northern 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 has been usually confounded, that in the 

 ' Catalogue of Seals in the Collection of the British Museum ' I re- 

 garded it as a distinct species under the name of Arctocejjhalus ursinus, 

 giving an abridgment of Steller's description as its specific character. 



The name Arcfocephalus ursimis is usually applied to the various 

 species of Eared Fur-Seals found in the different English and Con- 

 tinental Museums. 



The British Museum has just received from Amsterdam, under 

 the name Otaria leonina, a specimen of the Sea Bear from Behring's 

 Straits, which was obtained from St. Petersburg. It is evidently 

 not an Otaria, but a new genus allied to Arctocephalus, and agrees 

 in all its characters with the Sea Bear, Ursus marinus of Steller, and 

 not with the Sea Lion or Leo marinus of that author, which is called 

 Otaria SteUeri in the catalogues, and was confounded with Otaria 

 honina of the Southern Pacific Ocean by Nilsson and most modern 

 authors. The latter animal is still a desideratum in the British 

 Museum and other European Collections. 



The skin is 8 feet long, and agrees in aU particulars with SteUer's 

 description of the adult male of the species, and is most distinct in 

 external character and colour from the Fur-Seal (ArctocepJialiis 

 Falhlandicus) of the Falkland Islands and from A. lohatus from 

 Australia. 



The skuU is equally distinct from the various skulls of all the 

 species of the genus Arctocephalvs (both Fur- and Hair-Seals) which 

 are in the Collection of the British Museum, and is easily known 

 from them by the shortness of the face and the height and convexity 

 of the nose. 



The skull of this specimen is quite distinct from the skull of the 

 Arctocephahis Gilliespii of California, recently described by Dr. Mac- 

 Bain in the ' Proceedings of the Physical Society of Edinbu^rgh,' 

 under the name of Otaria Gilliespii, from a skull in the Edinburgh 

 Natural History Museum, of which we have a cast in the British 

 Museum : but we are not able to ascertain with certainty whether 

 this is a Fur- or Hair- Seal, though, from the length of the palate, 

 compared with the width of the skull at the hinder grinders, I am 

 induced to believe that it may belong to an animal which has a soft 



