616 PHOCA FCETIDA RINGED SEAL. 



by Professor Turner as having been found in the brick clays of 

 Scotland. It appears also to be a common species in the North 

 Pacific, there being specimens in the ISTational Museum, unques- 

 tionably of this species, from the coast of Alaska, and from 

 Plover Bay, on the Siberian side of Behring's Strait. Its 

 southern limit of distribution along the shores of the l^orth 

 Pacific, on either the American or the Asiatic side, cannot at 

 present be given. Judging from its known distribution in 

 other portions of the Arctic waters, there is no reason to infer 

 its absence from the northern shores of Eastern Asia and West- 

 ern l^orth America. 



General History and Nomenclature. The earliest 

 notices of this species in systematic works are based on the brief 

 account given by Oranz in 1765, but there appear to be still 

 earlier references to it by Scandinavian writers. As, however, 

 they involve no questions of synonymy, and may in i^art relate 

 to the Gray Seal {MaUchoerus grypus), they call for no special re- 

 mark in the present connection. The " Gr^ Sial " of Linne's 

 "Fauna Suecica" (1747), however, was referred by Otto Fabri- 

 cius, in 1791, to Phoca fa3tida,hut recent writers, notably Lillje- 

 borg, have assigned it to Halichoerus grypus, but Linne's account 

 seems to be too vague to be positively identified, although it 

 later became the basis of Gmelin's Phoca vitulina botnica. 



As already noticed, the early technical history of the species 

 is based on the brief notice of it published in 1765 by the Dan- 

 ish missionary, Cranz, who, in his "Historie von Gronland,'' re- 

 ferred to it under its native or Eskimo name Neitsek. He says 

 it is not very different from the Attarsoak {Phoca grcenlandica 

 of systematists) "in size or color, only that the hair is a little 

 browner or a pale white, nor does it lie smooth, but rough, 

 bristly, and intermixed like pig's hair."* Pennant, in 1771, in 

 his " Synopsis of Quadrupeds," called it the Rough Seal, and 

 paraphrased Cranz's description, adding thereto the conjec- 

 ture : " Perhaps what our Kewfoundland Seal-hunters call Square 

 Phlpper''\ In 1776 it was enumerated in the introduction to Miil- 

 ler's "ZoologiiB Danicic Prodromus " (p. viii), in a list of Green- 

 land animals supplied by Otto Fabricius after the main body of 

 the work had been printed, where it first receives a systematic 

 name, being there called Phoca footida. No description is given, 

 but its supposed Icelandic and Greenlandic names are ap]>euded, 

 namely, " I. Utseh: Gr. Neitselc^ Neitsilek,^^ but unfortunately the 



* English edition, 1767, vol. i, pp. 124, 125. 



