GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION. 587 



commonest species of the family. It also extends northward 

 and eastward along the Arctic coast of Europe, but late ex- 

 plorers of the Spitzbergen and Jan Mayen Islands do not enu- 

 merate it among the species there met with. Malmgren states 

 distinctly that it is not found there,* and it is not mentioned by 

 Yon Heuglin nor by the other German naturalists who have re- 

 cently visited these islands. From its littoral habits its absence 

 there might be naturally expected. It is also said by some 

 writers to occur in the Black and Caspian Seas, and in Lake 

 Baikal, but the statement is seriously open to doubt, as will be 

 shown later in connection with the history of the Einged Seal. 



On the Pacific coast of ISTorth America it occiu\s from Southern 

 California northward to Behring's Strait, where it seems to be an 

 abundant species. I have examined specimens from the Santa 

 Barbara Islands, and various intermediate points to Alaska, and 

 from Plover Bay, on the eastern coast of Siberia. The extent 

 of its range on the Asiatic coast has not been ascertained. If 

 it is the species leferred to by Pallas under the name Phoca 

 canina, and by Temminck, Von Schrenck, and other German 

 writers under the name Phoca nummularis, as seems probable, 

 it occurs in Jaj)an and along the Amoor coast of the Ochots 

 Sea. Von Schrenck speaks of it, on the authority of the natives, 

 as entering the Amoor River.t The late Dr. Gray referred a 

 specimen from Japan to his ''HaUcyon richardsi,^^ which, as al- 

 ready shown, is merely a synonym of Phoca vituUna. It thus 

 doubtless ranges southward along the Asiatic coast to points 

 nearly corresponding in latitude with its southern limit of dis- 

 tribution on the American side of the Pacific. 



The Harbor Seal not only frequents the coast of the North 

 Atlantic and the ISTorth Pacific, and some of the larger interior 

 seas, but ascends all the larger rivers, often to a considerable 

 distance above tide- water. It even passes up the Saint Law- 

 rence to the Great Lakes, and has been taken in Lake Cham- 

 plain. DeKay states, on the authority of a Canadian news- 

 paper, that a Seal (in all probability of this species) was taken 

 in Lake Ontario near Cape Vincent (Jefferson County, New 

 York) about 1824, and adds that the same paper says that In- 

 dian traders report the previous occurrence of Seals in the same 

 lake, though such instances are rare.| Thompson gives two in- 



* Wiegm. Arch, fiir Naturg. 1864, p. 84. 

 t Reisen im Amoor-Lande, Bd. i, p. 180. 

 t New York Zoology, pt. i, 1842, p. 55. 



