GENERAL HISTORY. 337 



clearly set forth till 1859, when Dr. J. E. Gray described and 

 figured its skull, and showed that the Northern species was not 

 even congeneric with the Sea Bears of the South. Very few 

 specimens of either the Northern or Southern Sea Bears appear 

 to have reached European museums prior to about that date, 

 so that naturalists had not previously been able to make a direct 

 comparison of this species with any of its Southern affines. 

 Dr. Gray, in referring to this point in 1859, wrote as follows : 

 " I had not been able to see a specimen of this species in any 

 of the museums which I examined on the Continent or in Eng- 

 land, or to find a skull of the genus [Arctocephalus] from the 

 North Pacific Ocean, yet I felt so assured? from Steller's de- 

 scription and the geographical position, that it must be distinct 

 from the Eared Fur Seals from the Antarctic Ocean and Aus- 

 tralia, with which it had usually been confounded, that in my 

 i Catalogue of Seals in the Collection of the British Museum' 

 [1850] I regarded it as a distinct species, under the name of 

 Arctocephalus ursinus, giving an abridgment of Steller's descrip- 

 tion as its specific character." " The British Museum," he adds r 

 "has just received, under the name Otaria leonina^ from Am- 

 sterdam, a specimen [skull and skin] of the Sea Bear from 

 Behring's Straits, which was obtained from St. Petersburg";* 

 which is the specimen already spoken of as figured by Dr. 

 Gray. From the great differences existing between this skull 

 and those of the southern Sea Bears, Dr. Gray, a few weeks 

 later, separated the northern species from the genus Arctoce- 

 phalus, under the name Callorhinusj 



It seems, however, that there were two skulls of Steller's 

 Sea Bear in the Berlin Museum as early as 1841,J and three 

 skeletons of the same species in the Museum of Munich in 1849, 

 yet Dr. Gray appears to have been the first to compare this 

 animal with its southern relatives, and to positively decide its 

 affinities. 



Misled, however, by erroneous information respecting speci- 

 mens of Eared Seals received at the British Museum from Cali- 

 fornia, a skin of the Callorhinus ursinus was doubtfully described 

 by this author, in the paper in which the name Callorhinus was 

 proposed, as that of his Arctocephalus monteriensis, which is a 



* Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1859, p. 102. 

 t Ibid., 1859, 359. 



J: See Archiv fur Naturgesch., 1841, p. 334. 

 $ Ibid., 1849, 39. 



Misc. Pub. No. 12 22 



