SPECIES. 195 



or possibly a second {O.falMandtca), is positively referable to 

 any j)articiilar species as now known. 



Three years later (in 1820) Desmarest again, in his "Mamma- 

 logie" (Encyclopedie Methodiqne, vol. clxxxii, pp. 248-252), re- 

 described the Otaries, reducing the number of species to eight 

 by uniting his Otaria ])usilla to his Otaria peroni under the 

 latter name, which now relates not only to the Fur Seals of the 

 western coast of Australia, but also to those of the Cape of Good 

 Hope. 



Lesson, eight years later, in his article on the Otaries (Dic- 

 tionnaire classique d'Histoire Xaturelle, vol. xiii, 1828, pp. 419- 

 426), raised the number to fifteen. One is purely mythical ; five 

 or six can be determined as equivalent to species now commonly 

 recognized, but the greater part are not satisfactorily identifia- 

 ble, His species are the following: 1. Otaria fabricii {='' Flioca 

 wmnaFabricius"; habitat, Greenland; wholly undeterminable; 

 oertainly not an Eared Seal, and probably whoUy mythical) ; 2. 

 Otaria stelleri{=Leomarinus, ^teller, =Uumetopias stelleri, which 

 here receives its first distinctive name) ; 3. Otaria californiana 

 (z=" jeune Lion marin de la Calif ornie," of Choris, and hence = 

 ZalopJius gillespii of recent authors, which here received its first 

 specific name*) ; 4. Otaria TcrascJienniniJcoivii (= Ursus marinuSy 



a long footnote to this description he gives quotations from Olaiis Magnus, 

 Zorgdrager, Charlevoix, and from collections of voyages, which relate to the 

 Seals of both the Arctic and Antarctic regions, none of which probably re- 

 fer to any species of Eared Seal. On the following page he says: ''C'est 

 par une convenance qui d'abord parolt assez l^gfere, & par quelques rapports 

 fugitifs que nous avons jug6 que ce second phoque {yl. LIII) 6toit le jylioca 

 des anciens ; on nous a assur^ que I'individu que nous avons vu. venoit des 

 Indes, 4&. il est aumoinstr^s-probablequ'il venoit desmers du Levant; . . ." 

 Mist. Nat., xiii, 1765, pp. 340, 341. Though assumed to be a Mediterranean 

 species, the origin of the specimen here described and figured as "Le Petit 

 Phoque " is avowedly unknown, and a certainly ereoneous habitat is as- 

 signed to it. This is the sole basis, however, for the Phoca pusilla of all the 

 earlier systematists, and of some modern ones. As already stated, Desma- 

 rest's Otaria pusilla is purely mythical; for while he describes an Eared Seal, 

 he claims for it a Mediterranean habitat, and deems .it to be the species 

 described by Aristotle, Pliny, and ^lian, and figured by Belon, and even 

 goes so far as to say, "Buffon et Erxleben paroissent avoir confondu, avec 

 ce i)hoque, de jeunes individus d'autres espfeces particulieres aux Terres Atis- 

 trales, et particulierement a I'ours-marin de I'ile de Juan-Fernandez. Quant 

 a lui, il semble propre a la Mediterran6e." The Fhocaimsilla of Erxleben and 

 Gmelin is a heterogenous compound of Eared and Earless Seals from both 

 hemispheres. 



* See further remarks, jjosiea, under Eumetopias stelleri and Zaloplius calif or- 

 nianus. 



