616 PHOCA FCETIDA RINGED SEAL. 



by Professor Turner as having been found in the brick clays of 

 Scotland. It appears also to be a common species in the North 

 Pacific, there being specimens in the National Museum, unques- 

 tionably of this species, from the coast of Alaska, and from 

 Plover Bay, on the Siberian side of Behring's Strait. Its 

 southern limit of distribution along the shores of the North 

 Pacific, on either the American or the Asiatic side, cannot at 

 present be given. Judging from its known distribution in 

 other portions of the Arctic waters, there is no reason to infer 

 its absence from the northern shores of Eastern Asia and West- 

 ern North America. 



GENERAL HISTORY AND NOMENCLATURE. The earliest 

 notices of this species in systematic works are based on the brief 

 account given by Cranz in 1765, but there appear to be still 

 earlier references to it by Scandinavian writers. As, however, 

 they involve no questions of synonymy, and may in part relate 

 to the Gray Seal (Halichcerus yrypus), they call for no special re- 

 mark, in the present connection. The "Gra Sial" of Linne's 

 "Fauna Suecica" (1747), however, was referred by Otto Fabri- 

 cius, in 1791, to Phoca fcetida, but recent writers, notably Lillje- 

 borg, have assigned it to Halichcerm grypus, but Linne's account 

 seems to be too vague to be positively identified, although it 

 later became the basis of Gmelin's Phoca mtulina botnica. 



As already noticed, the early technical history of the species 

 is based on the brief notice of it published in 1765 by the Dan- 

 ish missionary, Cranz, who, in his " Historie von Gronland," re- 

 ferred to it under its native or Eskimo name Neitsek. He says 

 it is not very different from the Attarsoak (Phoca grcenlandica 

 of systematists) "in size or color, only that the hair is a little 

 browner or a pale white, nor does it lie smooth, but rough, 

 bristly, and intermixed like pig's hair."* Pennant, in 1771, in 

 his " Synopsis of Quadrupeds," called it the Rough Seal, and 

 paraphrased Cranz's description, adding thereto the conjec- 

 ture : u Perhaps what our Newfoundland Seal-hunters call Square 

 Phipper". In 1776 it was enumerated in the introduction to Miil- 

 ler's "Zoologia3 Danicse Prodroinus" (p. viii), in a list of Green- 

 land animals supplied by Otto Fabricius after the main body of 

 the work had been printed, where it first receives a systematic 

 name, being there called Phoca fcstida. No description is given, 

 but its supposed Icelandic and Greenlandic names are appended, 

 namely, " I. Utselr. Gr. Neitsek, Neitsilek," but unfortunately the 



* English edition, 1767, vol. i, pp. 124, 125. 



