98 REPORT OF NEW JERSEY STATE MUSEUM. 
Family PHOCIDZ. 
SEALS. 
Seals are aquatic carnivorous animals wholly different from 
the whales with which they are often popularly associated by 
reason of their living in the sea. They have a head resembling 
that of the otter. The body is covered with hair, and the feet 
(all four of which are present), while modified into flippers, are 
also used to some extent to support the body when the animal 
rests on shore. 
Such seals as have occurred in the waters of New Jersey are 
mere stragglers from far north, and only one species has occurred 
more than once, namely the harbor seal, which is found regu- 
larly as far south as the Maine coast. 
Seals of two genera have occurred on the New Jersey coast: 
a. A hood-like appendage on the head of the male; incisor teeth, two above 
and one below on each side. CYSTOPHORA 
aa. No hood-like appendage on the head; incisors, three above and two 
below on each side. PHOCA 
Genus CystoPHorRA Nillson. 
Cystophora cristata (Erxleben). 
Hooded Seal. 
PLATE 47. 
Length, 7 feet. Color, bluish-black above, lighter beneath; 
varied with whitish spots; sometimes light gray with dark spots. 
Recognized at once by the “hood-like’” bag on the head of the 
male and by the small number of front teeth (incisors), four 
above and two below instead of six and four as in all other true 
seals. 
One individual of this species was captured June 3, 1883, at 
Spring Lake, N. J., and lived for a short time in the Phila- 
delphia Zoological Garden. It had probably come south on an 
iceberg (A. E. Brown, American Naturalist, Nov., 1883, p. 
119%): 
Cystophora cristata Brown, Amer. Naturalist, 1883, p. 11gI— 
Rhoads, Mam. Pa. and N. J, 1903, p. 126: 
