114 patagonian expeditions: zoology. 



Note on the Name of the Northern Sea Lion. 



As already said, Phoca jubata Schreber was based primarily on the Leo 

 marimis of Steller, the description being almost wholly from Steller, with 

 references to the Sea Lion of Pernetty ; and as Steller did not figure the 

 Sea Lion, as he did the Sea Bear, Schreber copied Pernetty's execrable 

 figure of the Sea Lion of the Falkland Islands, supposing, as did subse- 

 quent naturalists generally for the next fifty years, that the Northern and 

 Southern Sea Lions were specifically the same. In 1816, as stated above, 

 Peron asserted their specific distinctness, restricted the name Jubata to 

 the Northern Sea Lion, and gave what he evidently supposed to be a new 

 name, leonma, to the Southern Sea Lion, and transferred both from Phoca 

 to his new genus Otaria. As already explained, the name Otaria leonina 

 is untenable on account of Molina's having previously called the same 

 animal Phoca leonina, a. name preoccupied by Linnaeus's Phoca leonina 

 for the Sea Elephant. 



Lesson in 1862 renamed the Northern Sea Lion Otaria stellevi, and the 

 name stelleri has since been in almost universal use for this animal. In 

 view of Peron's restriction, twelve years before, of the name jubata to 

 this species, the name stelleri obviously becomes a synonym of jubata, and 

 the correct name of Steller's Sea Lion is Eumetopias jubata (Schreber). 

 Unfortunate as it may seem, the history of the case shows the necessity 

 of the change, under the current rules of nomenclature. 



Early History of the Northern and Southern Sea Lions. 



The case of the Northern and Southern Sea Lions, often known respec- 

 tively as Steller's Sea Lion and Forster's Sea Lion, furnishes an instructive 

 illustration of the struggles of zoologists in arriving at a fair knowledge 

 of animals long known only from the vague accounts of explorers and 

 travellers, who, while perhaps eminent in other ways, were not good nat- 

 uralists. The case of the Fur Seals, or Sea Bears, of the northern and 

 southern hemispheres is equally complicated and interesting, but need not 

 be dealt with at length in this connection ; it may suffice to say that the 

 history of these groups is perfectly parallel to that of the Sea Lions. Our 

 knowledge of the northern forms dates, in both cases, from Steller (1751), 

 whose classic memoir on these animals forms a conspicuous landmark 

 in the early history of mammalogy. In his "De Bestiis Marinis" both 



