204 MAMMALS. 



published at St. Petersburg-, in 1751.* He did not live to superintend its publication, and tbe 

 specific name which he had intended to give it was properly altered to Rhytina Stelleri, in memory 

 and honour of him. 



Since then various more or less successful attempts, chiefly by the Eussian authorities, have 

 been made to procure the bones of this species from its old haunts ; and Professor Brandt has 

 profited by those specimens which have come into the St. Petersburg collection, to publish two ex- 

 cellent accounts of the history and structure of the animal.f More recently, Professor Nordmann, of 

 Helsingfors, has published an account of one which had been obtained by the Imperial university 

 of that place.J This had been procured by Professor Nordiuann, through a friend, the Governor of 

 Russian America, who got an immature specimen (a baby of only some sixteen and a half feet in 

 length), dug up in Bhering's Island by two Aleutians. The whole skeleton seemed to belong to 

 one individual, the only parts deficient were the hand-bones, some of the caudal vertebras and the 

 ej)iphyses of the shoulder-blade, humerus, ulna, and radius. Curiously enough, one of these de- 

 ficient parts is a part on which information was particularly wanted, ^'iz. the hand-bones. Steller 

 especially notes as a remarkable anomaly, the absence of fingers in the pectoral fins. Nord- 

 mann does not seem to accept this as correct, for he simply says that if an expert had been 

 present he would ijrobably have found the missing parts likewise. I doubt it. 



The account of this animal is therefore not absolutely complete, and I cannot refrain from 

 echoing a suggestion made in a recent number of the "Natural History Review," § that 

 " the crew of one of the vessels of war on the Pacific station might be very usefully emploj'ed in 

 visiting Bhering's Island, and obtaining for our national collection a skeleton of this very singular 

 mammal. At present we have not a fragment of it in this countrj^, except two ribs, purchased by 

 the British Museimi some two years since from St. Petersburg. A cruise up to Bhering's Island 

 in the summer months, and a little digging, would involve neither hardship nor risk to the vessel 

 selected for the service, and might be the means of much increasing our knowledge of this curious 

 animal." 



I would only venture to add to this most excellent suggestion, that ice-bound Mammoths 

 and Rhinoceroses are still to be obtained on the Arctic shores of Asia, and that the cruise recom- 

 mended might be extended with advantage as far as the mouth of the Lena or Jenesei, with a -s-iew 

 of securing one or more of these creatures ; suitable preparations, of course, being made for car- 

 rying oif a specimen shoiild one be met with. A somewhat similar suggestion or proposition has 

 recently been made to the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg for promoting the discovery of the 

 congealed remains of gigantic mammifers in Siberia. 



The only place where the Rhytina Stellert was found in any numbers was Bhering's 

 Island, but it appears to have been sparingly scattered along the coast of Kamschatka, and, 

 according; to Harlan, the west coast of North America, and among the Aleutian Islands. Can it 

 also have ranged along the whole of the north coast of Siberia and Europe to Greenland ? 

 Otho Fabricius quotes it as an inhabitant of Greenland in these terms ; " a veiy rare animal 

 in the Greenland sea, a partially consumed craniimi of which was all that I saw, in which were 

 spurious teeth (the hornj' plates) closely congested, such as Steller describes." || 



* Stelleh, G. W. "De Bcstii.s Maviuis." Nov. Comm. J Nordman, "BeitragezurKenntnissdesKnochen-baiies 



Petr. xi., p. 294, 1751. der Rhytina Stelleri," Acta Soc. Sc. FennicfE, vii. 1861. 



t Brandt, '• Symbola; Sircnologicrc, in Mem. Acat^. S. § " Nat. Hist. Rev.," Jan. 1865, p. 18. 



Pet(a'sb. Sc. Nat." 1849. || Fahuioius, O., " Fauna GrcEuIandica," p. 6, 1780. 



