250 EUMETOPIAS STELLEEI STELLER's SEA LION. 



teriensis], the young animal is blackish, silvered by the short 

 white tips to the short black hairs; those on the nape and 

 hinder parts of the body with longer white tips, making tliose 

 parts whiter and more silvery. The nnder-fur is very abund- 

 ant, reaching nearly to the end of the hair. The end of the 

 nose and sides of the face are whitish. The whiskers are elon- 

 gated, rigid, smooth, and white. The hind feet are elongate, 

 with rather long flaps to the toes. The skull is small for the 

 size of the skin, and I should have doubted its belonging to 

 the skin if it were not accompanied by the following label: 

 ' Skull of the Fur Seal I sent last year. It is very imperfect, 

 from my forgetting where I had put it ; but it must do until acci- 

 dent throws another in the way; the other bones were lost. 

 A. S. T.'"* Dr. Gray, in his ''Hand-List," published in 1874, 

 refers the skulls, of both J., monteriensis and A. calif o mi anus 

 to Eumetopias stelleri^ but makes no reference to the skin. As 

 he seems, however, to have become settled in his opinion tJiat 

 this skin is identical with his A. monteriensis^ this may ac- 

 count for the statement made by him in 186G,t and subse- 

 quently reiterated, % that the Eumetopias stelleri is a species in 

 which "the fur is very dense, standing nearly erect from the 

 skin, forming a very soft, elastic coat, as in 0. falklandica and 

 0. stelleri, which," he erroneously says, "are the only Seals 

 that have a close, soft, elastic fur." 



Lesson gave the name Otaria California na toasupposed species 

 of Eared Seal based solely on a figure entitled " Jeune lion mariu 

 de la Californie," published by Choris. || The following is the 

 only allusion Ohoris makes to this animal, in this connection, 

 in his text: "Les rochers dans le voisinage de la bale San- 

 Francisco sont ordinairement converts de lions marins. PL 

 XL" In his chapter on the "lies A16outiennes," in describing 

 the "Lions marins," he says: "Cesanimaux sont aussi tres-com- 

 muns au port de San-Francisco, sur la cote de Californie, oti 



*Proc. Zool. Soc. Lond., 1850, p. 358. 



f Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist., 4th series, 1866, vol. i, p. 101. 



Ubid., p. 215. 



Dr. Gray's mistake seems to have misled otliers in respect to the real 

 characters of Eumetopias stelleri, which Dr. Veatch, on the authority of Gray, 

 refers to as the '^fur-coated Euraatopias," which he supposed to be tlie 

 proper name of the Fur Seal of the North. (See "Eeport of Dr. John A. 

 Veatch on Cerros or Cedros Island," in J. Eoss Browne's "Eesources of the 

 Pacific Slope," [appendix], p. 150, 1869.) 



II Voyage Pittoresqne, pi. xi, of the chapter entitled "Port San-Francisco 

 et ses habitants." The date of this work is 1822. 



