468 FAMILY PHOCID^E 



Africa. An apparently near relative and geographical repre- 

 sentative of this species is found on the shores of Yucatan, Cuba, 

 Jamaica, the Bahamas, and the Florida Keys. None of the 

 remaining members of the Phocince occur in the North Atlantic, 

 except as stragglers, south of the British Islands and Spain, on 

 the European coast, or of New Jersey on the American, or of 

 Japan and Lower California in the North Pacific. The species 

 having the widest distribution is the common Phoca mtulina^ 

 which occurs not only in both the North Atlantic and North 

 Pacific Oceans, as far southward as the limits just given, but 

 reaches Greenland, Finmark, and the northern coast of Europe 

 generally, and is also found in Behring's Straits. Other species, 

 as Erignathus barbatus, Phoca fcetida, and Phoca grcenlandica, 

 extend beyond its habitat to the northward, but have a much 

 more limited range to the southward, the British Islands and 

 the coast of the United States being quite beyond their usual 

 southern limit of distribution. Like Phoca vitulina these species 

 also occur in the North Pacific. Two other species are restricted 

 to the North Atlantic, namely, Halichcerus grypus and Cysto- 

 phora cristata, neither of which ranges so far northward as the 

 others, and the latter only casually wanders to the southward 

 of Newfoundland and the southern coast of Scandinavia, while 

 the former reaches Nova Scotia and Ireland. Phoca fcetida and 

 Erignafhus barbatus are the most northern of all, both being 

 winter residents of the icy shores of Davis's Strait and Jan 

 Mayen Island. It thus appears that of the six species found 

 on the northern shores of Europe, Greenland, and the Atlantic 

 coast of North America, two only are confined to the North 

 Atlantic, the other four being common also to the North Pacific. 

 The Histriophoca fasciata, on the other hand, is limited to the 

 North Pacific, and is the only species occurring there that is not 

 also found in the North Atlantic. Consequently about one- 

 half of the commonly recognized species of the Phocidce of the 

 Northern Hemisphere have a circumpolar distribution. 



A species (Phoca caspica) formerly regarded by writers as 

 identical with Phoca vitulina, and by others a nearly allied but 

 distinct species, inhabits the Caspian Sea, and another (Phoca 

 sibirica), similarly referred by most writers to Phoca fcetida, 

 inhabits Lake Baikal. These great interior and almost iso- 

 lated seas have been for so long a time separated, the Caspian 

 Sea wholly, and Lake Baikal nearly, from the great oceans or 

 any other large body of water communicating with the sea, 



