30 Oil the Seals of the Auckland Islands. 



suiTOundiug islets 13,000 as good fur-seal-skins as ever were 

 brought into the New-York market." But as yet no small or 

 large fur-seal from the Aucklands has readied Europe, unless 

 it is the fur-seal of commerce {Otaria falklandica^ Hamil- 

 ton, Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 1838, ii. p. 81, t. xli., and Jar- 

 dine, Naturalist's Library, vi. p. 271, t. xxv.), of which we 

 have specimens in the Museum without any reliable habitats 

 and without skulls, which have been compared with the original 

 specimens in the Museum of Edinburgh, said to have been 

 brought from South Georgia or South Shetland by Captain 

 Weddell; but the skins of these seals are very rare in the country 

 now, which agrees with the account of their being no longer 

 to be found in the Aucklands in 1830. 



Mr. Clark finishes his paper by some remarks on my genus 

 Gypsoplioca. He doubts whether the skull received from the 

 Auckland Islands and regarded by Dr. Hector as the young of 

 Arctocephalus cinereus is a GypsopJioca^ but thinks it " may 

 very probably be a young 0. Hookeri-^'' and he at the same 

 time observes, " The skull in the British Museum from North 

 Australia is that of so young a specimen that it would be 

 difficult, unless one had a very large series of skulls of different 

 sexes and ages to compare it with, to determine its species 

 with certainty, though I suspect it will tui-n out to be Arcto- 

 cephalus cinereus ^^ (p. 759). 



These observations of Mr. Clark's are exactly such as it is 

 the object of this paper to prevent ; and the fact of Mr. Clark 

 having fallen into such a mistake shows the necessity of the 

 subject being studied, even by the keepers of anatomical 

 museums. The skull received by Dr. Hector from the Auck- 

 land Islands and the skull in the British Museum from North 

 Australia, though neither of them is the skull of a full-grown 

 or aged animal, are both fully developed and of animals 

 which have their permanent teeth in a complete state, with 

 even their canines developed ; and they both have, besides the 

 peculiarity in the form of the base of the skull, the last two 

 upper grinders placed behind the back edge of the front of the 

 zygomatic arch, in a way that is only found in the genus 

 Gypsophoca, and is not found in either Phocarctos Ilookeri or 

 Euotaria cinerea — or, as Mr. Clark chooses to call one, Arcto- 

 cephalus cinereus^ and, tlie other, Otaria Hookeri, although the 

 latter has no relation to the restricted genus Otaria. 



