684 GENUS HALICHCERUS. 



1777,* supposing it to have been based on the Plioca (jrypus 

 of Fabricius. Dr. Gill does not appear to have anywhere given 

 reasons for this interpretation. In Johnson's " Cyclopedia," as 

 above cited, he simply calls the Gray Seal '' Pusa {Halichoerus) 

 grypus^\ which is doubtless to be interpreted as Pusa { = Hali- 

 ehoerns) grypus. Dr. Coues, however, has had occasion to con- 

 sider Pusa in relation to its use by Oken, in 181G, as a generic 

 designation for the Sea Otter. In referring to this point Dr. Coues 

 observes: ''-Pusa had, however, already been used by another 

 writer in connection with a genus of Seals now commonly 

 known as JlaUchcerus, but in such a peculiar way as to raise 

 one of those technical questions of synonymy which authors 

 interpret differently, in absence of fixed rule. Scopoli based 

 his Pnsa upon a figure of Salomon [lege Philipp Ludwig Statins] 

 Miiller's, recognizable with certainty as Halichcenis, and gave 

 characters utterly irreconcilable with those of this animal. 

 This is the whole case, o^ow it may be argued that there being 

 no such animal whatever as Scopoli says his Pusa was, his name 

 drops out of the system, and Pusa of Oken, virtually an en- 

 tirelj' new term, is tenable for something else, namely, for the 

 Sea Otter. On the other hand, Scopoli's quotations show ex- 



1765, p. 1(51). The same form of the word is used by Schreber (Silngth., 

 Thcil iii, j*. 285). Erxlebeu (Syst. Eeg. Auim., 1777, p. 586) gives Fiirse and 

 Kassigiak as the Greenlandiq names of Phoca rituUna. Fabricius, in 1790 

 (Skrivter af Naturhistorie-Selskabet, Bd. i, Heftc 1, 1790, p. 90 aud foot- 

 note oO), gives Pidrse in his text as one of the Greenlandic names of the 

 Harp Seal, and in a footnote gives a further account of the word. He 

 says : Pua, as written by Cranz, and after him by Schreber, is erroneous, 

 this word meaning a lung. But Pilse, or Puese, as Professor Glahn (Anmier- 

 kninger til Cranzes Hist., ji. 150) corrected it, is not wholly right. Like- 

 wise incorrect is Anderson's Pusa in his " Efterr. om Strat-Davis, ^ LV ". It 

 is from here that Scopoli learned the name Pusa as he has used it for his 

 supposed new genus of animals, which, however, is nothing more than a 

 species of Seal (see Beschiift. Berl. Ges. Naturs., IV, B., p. 464). 



It thus axpears that the name Pusa, with its various orthographic forms, 

 was originally simply a generic term for Seals in general, the Greenlandic 

 equivalent of the Latin Phoca, the English Seal, etc. In view of this is it 

 improbable that the pigeon-term "Pmss^," said to be commonly employed 

 by the northern sailors and sealers of various nationalities for young Seals 

 in the white coat, may not be a corruption of the Greenlandic Pusaf 



" See Johnson's New Universal Cycloiiedia, vol. iii, 1877, p. 1226. He 

 also employed the name in the same sense in 1876 in his anonymous "List 

 of the Principal Useful or Injurious Mammals" of North America. For an 

 account of the last-named publication see aiiieu, p. 22. 



