GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. 667 



extension of the unbroken ice-fields. The southern limit of its 

 range along the Atlantic coast of North America is at present 

 indeterminable. Professor Jukes * gave it doubtfully in his list 

 of the Seals of Newfoundland, supposing it to be the Square 

 Flipper of sealers. Among the many examples of Seals I have 

 had opportunity of examining from Newfoundland, however, 

 I have never met with a specimen of the Bearded Seal. If the 

 Square Flipper of the Newfoundland sealers be really the 

 Bearded Seal, as seems probable, it must be, according to Car- 

 roll, of regular occurrence in small numbers about Newfound- 

 land. 



Dr. Packard! has attributed it to Labrador, where it un- 

 doubtedly occurs, but he gives it on the hypothetical ground 

 that "It is probably the species which is called by the sealers 

 'Square Flipper,' " and says that adults will "weigh 500 to 600 

 pounds ". Its occurrence in Labrador, however, is apparently 

 established by Wagner, who described a specimen, " das aus 

 Labrador herstammt^.J 



Although well known to visit the shores of Greenland, and 

 to range very far north, its limit in this direction still remains 

 undetermined. J. 0. Ross states that it approaches the shores 

 of Boothia "only in the summer season," and that in winter it 

 seeks " those parts of the Arctic Ocean which are seldom, if 

 ever, frozen over for any length of time". Dr. Eink says 

 that it occurs only in small numbers in Greenland, and chiefly 

 at the "northern and southern extremities of the coast." || Mr. 

 Robert Brown's account of its distribution is as follows : "This 

 species has been so often confounded with the Grey Seal (H. 

 grypus) and the Saddleback (P. grwnlandicus) in different stages 

 and coats, that it is really very difficult to arrive at anything 

 like a true knowledge of its distribution. . . . On the coast 

 of Danish Greenland it is principally caught in the district of 

 Julianshaab a little time before the Klapmyds [Cystophora cris- 

 tata]. It is not, however, confined to South Greenland, but is 

 found at the head of Baffin's Bay and up the sounds of Lan- 

 caster, Eclipse, &c., branching off from the latter sea. The Seals 

 seen by the earlier navigators being nearly always referred in 



* Excurs. in Newfoundland, vol. i, p. 312. 

 tProc. Boston Soc. Nat. Hist., vol. x, p. 271. 

 t Schreber's Saugthiere, Band vii, p. 20. 

 Ross's 2d Voy., App., p. xxi. 

 || Danish Greenland, etc., p. 126. 



