18 OTARIAD^. 



is changed to A. schistuperus by Dr. Giinther in the * Zoological 

 Record' for 1868, p. 20. It is evidently the skull of a half-grown 

 animal, with all its teeth developed, but with the sutures of the 

 bones still apparent. It agrees in every respect with what I 

 should expect to be the form and structure of the skull of Arcto- 

 cephalus antarcticus from the Cape ; but unfortunately the two 

 skulls of that Sea-bear from the Cape which are in the British 

 Museum are from old animals ; and the specimen figured by Cuvier, 

 Oss. Foss. V. 220, 1. 18. f. 5, is also adult. It differs from the skulls 

 of the two adult specimens of that species in the British Museum 

 in the hinder nasal aperture being much extended forwards and 

 gradually tapering to a point in front, which reaches to the trans- 

 verse palato -maxillary suture. This peculiarity in the form of the 

 palate, which Prof. Turner has not observed in any other seal- 

 skuU, seems to have induced him to regard it as a distinct species. 

 From the examination I have made of the skulls of Seals in the 

 Museum and other collections, I am induced to believe that it 

 is an individual abnormality of Arctocephalus antarcticus. I have 

 observed a similar malformation in the palates of two other species. 

 I was myself misled by their structure, before I met with the 

 other examples, to regard a skull with such a deformity as a distinct 

 species. 



At one time I thought that it might be a peculiarity of the 

 young state, as it had up to that time only been observed in 

 skulls of half-grown animals. It occurs in half-grown specimens 

 of Euotaria nigrescens ; but the skulls of the very young spe- 

 cimens of this Seal in the British Museum have the front edge 

 of the hinder nasal opening truncated and slightly arched in form, 

 with well- developed square palatine bones united by a central suture 

 just as in the adult, but broader and straighter. 



It was this observation that induced me to return to my original 

 opinion, that the skull which I had at first regarded as a young 

 skull of Arctoceplihlus monteriensis (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1859), and 

 then as a separate species under the name of A. californianus 

 (Cat. Seals and Whales, p. 51), was only a monstrosity of A. 

 monteriensis, as I did in the Ann. & Mag. Nat. Hist. 1866, xviii. 

 p. 232 ; and I am now induced to believe that Arctocephalus 

 schisthyperoes is only an imperfectly developed skuU of A. ant- 

 arctica. 



Dr. J. E. Forster, in Cook's voyage in 1775, observed the Eared 

 Seal at the Cape of Good Hope, and called it Phoca ursina. Be- 

 lieving it to be the same as the Sea-bear he had observed in New 

 Zealand, Thunberg, in his list of Cape Mammalia in the third 

 volume of the ' Transactions of the St. Petersburg Academy,' iii. 

 322, notices this animal under the name of Phoca antarctica (see 

 Fischer, Syn. Mam. p. 242). Dr. Peters has applied the name of 

 Otaria pusilla to this species, believing it to be the Petit Phoque of 

 Buffon, which has been named Phoca pusilla by Schreber, and had 

 before been named Phoca parva by Boddaert. Buffon says that it 

 .came either from India or the Levant ; but it is not by its descrip- 



