SEA-LIONS. 231 



fact, that these several specimens have not been sa- 

 tisfactorily referred to any distinct species, or, it 

 may be, genera. 



In connection with the Sea-Lion of Steller, we 

 venture to prefix a copy which De Blainville took 

 of a cranium in the London College of Surgeons, 

 and which was labelled, *' Sea-Lion from the Island 

 of Tinian from Commodore Byron." This island, 

 one of the Ladrones, in lat. 15 N., borders on the 

 N. Pacific Ocean, though still at a great distance 

 from Behring's Island and the Kuriles, which were 

 the summer residence of Steller's Lion ; from which, 

 however, they went southwards on the approach of 

 winter. 



The following is an abridgment of Blainville's account of the 

 cranium, which wanted the lower jaw. It is more than a foot 

 long, and apparently belonged to an adult animal ; its crests are 

 remarkably strong, indicating the attachment of powerful muscles ; 

 the forehead and ehaufrin are almost horizontal ; the opening for 

 the nostrils is also horizontal, and of middling size ; the muzzle 

 is about one-third of the length of the whole head; the orbit 

 also is forward, so that the molars are carried far back. The 

 teeth are ( > ;) six incisors in a straight line, the external 

 much the largest, and like small canines ; the canines are of great 

 size ; and then, without any interval, six molars, almost equal in 

 length, and augmenting in thickness from the extreme ones to the 

 third ; they appear to have been all nearly pointed and conical. 

 M. F. Cuvier indicates Steller's Lion as the type of this genus, 

 and the above description agrees \vi*h Steller's very minute ao- 

 count of the teeth. 



