ALLEN : MAMMALIA : OTARIID/E. I I I 



land Islands. Schreber also mixes Pernetty's account of its habits with 

 Stellers, although Steller is necessarily his main authority, Pernetty's 

 information is so meagre. As, however, Steller gave no figure of the sea 

 lion, Schreber supplied this deficiency by copying Pernetty's grotesque 

 caricature of the Falkland Island animal. Schreber's Plioca jiibata was 

 thus composite, though based primarily on Steller. 



For the next fifty years, or till 1828, nearly all systematic writers fol- 

 lowed Schreber in considering the northern and southern sea lions as 

 specifically identical. Peron, in 18 16,' was the first author who had the 

 hardihood to assert that they were specifically distinct, and acting upon 

 this belief he bestowed the name leonina upon the southern one and 

 restricted the name jiibata, very properly, to the northern one, calling 

 them respectively Otaria leouiua and Otavia jiibata, without, however, 

 pointing out their distinctive differences. This he doubtless did, or 

 intended to do, in a paper on the Pinnipedia he left in manuscript at his 

 death, in 18 10, which was never published. Thus Peron, as the "first 

 reviser," fixed the n2imt jiibata, as he had a right to do, very appropriately 

 on the Leo iiiarimts of Steller. 



Unfortunately his name leonina for the Falkland Islands species proves 

 untenable, although subsequently employed for it for many years by 

 numerous authors. Its untenability in this connection is due to the fact 

 that Molina, in 1782, gave the name Phoca leonina to the same species, 

 as represented on the coast of Chili, notwithstanding the fact that he knew 

 that Linnaeus had previously (1758) bestowed the same name [Phoca 

 leonina) upon the Sea Elephant (now Miroiinga leonina auct.). 



A large number of specific names have been based, since 1782, on the 

 sea lions of the coasts and islands of southern South America, and from 

 these it is necessary to replace the name leonina of Molina and Peron. 

 The first of these, in order of time, is ( i ) PJioca flavescens, given by Shaw in 

 1800, and founded on the eared seal of Pennant. Pennant's description 

 was based on a young otary in the Leverian Museum, only about two 

 feet in length, said to have come from the Straits of Magellan. It is 

 entirely indeterminable from the description, but the locality, if correctly 

 indicated, leads to the inference that it was more likely a young sea lion 

 than a fur seal ; and this being the case, it may be hypothetically referred 

 to the genus Otaria, to which it has been provisionally assigned by the 



' Voy. aux Terr. Austr., II, 1816, pp. 37-40, passim. 



