666 ERIGNATHUS BARBATUS BEARDED SEAL. 



i 



White Sea. Although he erroneously gave the incisive formula 

 as f, and based his description and figure on the young still in 

 the white pelage, there has been little doubt among modern 

 writers of its identity with the Phoca barbata. For many years, 

 however, the Phoca leporina figured in the works of compilers 

 as a distinct species, and became thus a prominent synonym. 

 Lesson, in 1828, renamed it Phoca lepechini, at the same time 

 naming the Long-bodied Seal of Parsons Phoca parsonsi. 



In regard to its general history, it may be added that Fabri- 

 cius, in 1 791, in his monograph of the Greenland Seals, devoted 

 twenty pages to an account of Phoca barbata , giving a careful 

 description of its external characters, with detailed measure- 

 ments, and the first (and a very good) figure of its skull. He 

 adopted for it the Danish vernacular name "Bemmssel," identi- 

 fying with it S teller's Lacktak, the Icelandic names " Gramselur," 

 " Grcenselr," and " Kainpselur," and the Greenlandic names 

 " Urksuk" and " Uksuk," as well as the Phoca barbata of Miiller's 

 a Prodromus," of Erxlebeu, of the "Fauna Grceulandica," and 

 of Gmelin, and also Parsons's Long-bodied Seal, and the subse- 

 quent accounts based upon it. The next original information 

 of special importance appears to have been furnished by Tiriene- 

 mann, who, in 1824, in his account of the Seals of Iceland, de- 

 voted four plates to its illustration, figuring the adult female, a 

 two-year-old male, a yearling male, and the skull. 



In 1831 Pallas introduced two nominal species, referable here, 

 under the names Phoca nautica and Phoca albigena. With the 

 former he identified the Lacktak of Steller, while he made Le- 

 pechin's Phoca leporina a synonym of his Phoca albigena. These 

 names have been generally referred by subsequent writers, 

 either positively or with reservation, to Phoca barbata. Gray, 

 in 1871, separated the Bearded Seals of the North Pacific from 

 those of the North Atlantic as Phoca "naurica" (sic) apparently 

 wholly on the ground of locality, and referred to this Pallas's 

 Phoca nautica and Phoca albigena. 



Among the more important recent contributors to the history 

 of the species are Malmgren, Yon Heuglin, and Collett, the la,t- 

 ter, especially, having given a very full account of its habits 

 and distribution on the coast of Norway. 



GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. The present species is cir- 

 cumpolar and extremely boreal in its distribution, and appears 

 to be migratory only as it is forced southward in winter by the 



