98 REPORT OF NEW JERSEY STATE MUSEUM. 



Family PHOCID^. 



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-Hke appendage on the head; incisors, three above and two 



below on each side. phoca 



Genus Cystophora 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. 

 1191). 



Cystophora cristata Brown, Amer. Naturalist, 1883, p. 1191 — 

 Rhoads, Mam. Pa. and N. J., 1903, p. 126. 



