TECHNICAL HISTORY SPECIES. 421 



Histriophoca, Pusa, Monachus, Cystophora, Macrorhinus, Lobodon, 

 Ogmorhinus, Leptonychotcs, and Ommatophoca. While Dr. Gill 

 recognized the same number of genera in 1877 as in 1866, the 

 nomenclature is quite different ; but this is due mainly to simply 

 changes of names, as the substitution of Pwa for Halichoerus, 

 of Ogmorhinus for Stenorhynchus, and of Leptonychotes for Lep- 

 tonyx; but in the later enumeration Pagomys is omitted and His- 

 triophoca is added. 



So far as the number of genera is concerned, the greatest differ- 

 ence of opinion has always obtained in respect to the PhocincCj 

 all the members of which group are confined to the Northern 

 Hemisphere. Gray, after 1864 (1864-1874), uniformly recog- 

 nized seven ; Gill, 1866-1877, six, only two of which (Halichce- 

 rus and Monaclius, about which authors generally have for many 

 years been in unison) were the exact equivalents of Gray's 

 genera; but the chief disagreement consisted in Gill's use of 

 Phoca for what Gray termed Callocephalus, and of Erignathus for 

 what Gray termed Phoca. Lilljeborg*, in 1874, referred all of 

 the species of the PhocincCj except Haliclicerm grypus (and Mo- 

 nachus albiventer, which latter is not there treated), to the genus 

 Phoca, and von Heuglin the same year did the same, except that 

 Pagomys, Pagophilus, and Callocephalus (the latter being applied 

 to C. barbata) were recognized as subgenera under Phoca. The 

 classification and nomenclature of Giebel (1855), Blasius (1857), 

 Malmgren (1863), and Holmgren (1865) are, generically, the 

 same as Lilljeborg's in 1874. The tendency has, in short, been 

 to refer all the species of Phocinw, with the two exceptions al- 

 ready specified, to the Linnaean genus Phoca. 



SPECIES. Although Seals have figured in works on natural 

 history since the time of Eondelet, Olaus Magnus, and Gesner 

 (1554-1555), it is unnecessary in the present connection to refer 

 in detail to those earlier works, since down to the time of Steller 

 (1751), all the Phocids or Earless Seals known to systematic 

 writers were referred to the common Seal (Phoca vituUna, auct.) 

 of the shores of Middle and Northern Europe. This indeed was 

 the only species recognized by Linne, from the Northern Hem- 

 isphere, even in the last (1766) edition of his "Systema Naturae." 

 But other species had been incidentally and vaguely described 

 l>y the early Greenland missionaries, arid by explorers and trav- 

 ellers in both the Arctic and Antarctic regions, to which refer- 



* Fauna Sveriges och ]S T orges Ryggradsdjur, i, Daggdjnren, pp. 667-729. 



