SPECIES. 193 



Hair Seals (=tlie subgenera Eumetopias, Zalophus, and P/toc- 

 arctos of Peters's earlier papers). 



Species. Prior to about the beginning of tlie present cen- 

 tiiry, tlie Eared Seals then known were commonly referred to 

 two species, one of which was termed, in common parlance, the 

 Sea Bear, Ours marin, Meerbar, etc., and the other Sea Lion, 

 Lion marin, Meerlowe, etc. Th^y were hardly more definitely 

 known in technical terminology, the "Sea Bear" being Plioca 

 ursina, and the " Sea Lion" the Phoca juhata. The first of these 

 names originated with Linne in 1758,* and the other with 

 Torster in 1775.t Phoca ursina was based originally on Stel- 

 ler's Ursus marinus, and Phoca jtihata on the Southern Sea Lion, 

 or " Lion marin," of Pernetty, to which species these specific 

 names have of late been properly restricted. Zimmermann, in 

 [1782,1 named the Southern Sea Bear Phoca awstm?*s(=" Falk- 

 land Seal, Pennant II, p. 521," the Sea Bear of Forster), which 

 Shaw, in 1800, renamed Phoca falklandica. Both names were 

 based on the "Falkland Isle Seal" of Pennant, but Zimmer- 

 mann's seems to have been entirely overlooked by subsequent 

 writers. As it has eighteen years' priority, it must be adojited 

 in place of falklandica. 



During the last half of the last century and the early part of the 

 present, the early voyagers to the southern seas (as Anson, Per- 

 netty, Forster, Weddel, Peron and Lesueur, Quoy and Gaimard, 

 Lesson and Garnot, and Byron, among others) met with different 

 species of Sea Lions and Sea Bears. They described these ani- 

 mals very imperfectly, their accounts relating mainly to their 

 habits and localities of occurrence, and they brought with them 

 to Europe very few specimens. Desmarest in 1817, and Lesson 

 in 1828, gave names to the species thus obscurely indicated, the 

 latter renaming several that had already received names. To 

 these authors, and to the often-quoted remark of Peron that he 

 believed there were not less than twenty species of Otaries, we 

 are indebted for much of the confusion and obscurity that must 

 ever be inseparable from the early history of this group. Des- 

 marest alone, in his article on the Otaries in the " Dictionnaire 

 d'Histoire naturelle" (vol. xxv, 1817, pp. 590-603), recognized 



*Syst. Nat. J. 1758, 37. 

 tDescrip. Auim., pp. 66, 317. 

 t Geograpli. GescMclite, Theil iii, 1782, p. 276. 



G. Cuvier, according to Gray (Catalogue of Seals, 1850, p. 2), had. skuUs 

 of only two species of Eared Seals wlien lie wrote tlie '' Ossemens Fossiles." 

 Misc. Pub. ISo. 12 13 



