MIGRATIONS AND BREEDING STATIONS. 641 



keep mostly u to the loose floating floes which constitute what 

 is termed by the whale fishers 'the middle ice ? of Baffin's Bay 

 and Davis Straits." He says he never met with them in any 

 part of Prince Begentf s Inlet, but states that they are reported 

 by the natives to be very numerous on the west side of the 

 Isthmus of Boothia, but that they are not seen on the east 

 side.* They are well-known visitors to the shores of Iceland, 

 and swarm in the icy seas about Jan Mayen and Spitzbergen. 

 They also occur about Nova Zembla, and Payer refers to their 

 abundance at Franz Josef Land.t They occur in the Kara 

 Sea, and along the Arctic coast of Europe. Malmgren, Lillje- 

 borg, and Collett state that it is of regular occurrence on the 

 coast of Finmark, where it occurs in small numbers from Oc- 

 tober and November till February. Although reported by Bell 

 and others as having been taken in the Severn, and by Saxby f 

 as observed at Baltasouud, Shetland, the capture of a speci- 

 men in Morecombe Bay, England, reported by Turner in 1874, 

 Mr. E. E. Alston says is "the first British specimen that has 

 been properly identified." || 



The distribution of this species in the North Pacific is not 

 well known. Pallas (under the name Phoca dorsata) records 

 it from Kamtschatka, where its occurrence is also affirmed by 

 Steller. Temminck mentions having examined three skins ob- 

 tained at Sitka, but adds that it was not observed by "les voy- 

 ageurs neerlandais " in Japan. In the collections in the National 

 Museum from the North Pacific this species is unrepresented, 

 the species thus far received from there being the following 

 four, namely : Phoca mtulina, PJwcafcetida, Erignaihus barbatus, 

 and Histriophoca fascista. 



MIGRATIONS AND BREEDING STATIONS. The Saddleback, 

 although found at one season or another throughout a wide 

 extent of the Arctic seas, appears to be nowhere resident 



* Ross's Second Voyage, App., p. xxi. 



tNew Lands within the Arctic Circle, 1877, p. 266. 



| Mr. Henry L. Saxby, writing under date of Baltasound, Shetland, March 

 14, 1864, says, "Several Harp Seals are now to be seen in the deep shel- 

 tered voe at Baltasound. This species can scarcely be considered very rare 

 here, but it is said to occur in bad weather, and certainly the present visit 

 forms no exception to the rule, the wind having for some days been blow- 

 ing heavily from N. E., accompanied by sleet and snow." Zoologist, vol. 

 xxii, 1864, p. 9090. 



Journ. Anat. and Phys., vol. ix, 1874, p. 168. 



l| Zool. Rec., 1874, p. 10; Fauna of Scotland, Mam., 1880, p. 14. 



Misc. Pub. No. 12 41 



