22 OTARIAD^. 



and teeth are very accurately compared; and even then the di- 

 stinction is more imaginary than real. 



I cannot understand Capt. Abbott's account of this species. Ho 

 says that " the fuU-grovi^n Seal is about the size of the common 

 English Seal. The largest skin I have ever seen I do not think mea- 

 sured more than 4 feet in length, perhaps hardly so much. The hair 

 differs in colour, being sometimes grey, and at other times of a 

 brownish tint; that of the young is of a darker brown colour." 

 All this agrees better with the true 0. falJdandica ; but yet he says 

 the skin of his half-grown specimen is now in the British Museum, 

 and that skin is undoubtedly Euotaria nigrescens. Has Mr. Abbott 

 confounded the two species in his mind ? Or did he forget the 

 animal ? for he informed me that there were no Sea-elephants now 

 living on the island. (P. Z. S. 1868, p. 190.) 



" The bones of the pectoral limb of the Fur-Seal of commerce differ 

 from those of the Sea-lion."— if wWe, P. Z. S. 1869, p. 109. 



See Lecomte's account of the habits of these animals, P. Z. S. 

 1869, p. 106. 



The British Museum contains the skin and skull of a large 

 blackish Eared Seal, nearly 6 feet long, that was purchased of a 

 dealer as " a Fur-Seal from the Falkland Islands ;" but, as the 

 dealers seem always to give that as the habitat for all seal-skins 

 with a distinct under-coat that come into their possession, I have 

 quoted the habitat with doubt. ^\Tien occupied in describing the 

 Seals of the southern hemisphere for the ' Voyage of the Erebus 

 and Terror,' I named the Seal Arctocejyhalus nigrescens, and had the 

 skull figured under that name ; but the plate has not yet been pub- 

 lished, though copies of it have been given to Dr. Peters and other 

 zoologists. In the ' Proceedings of the Zoological Society ' for 

 1859, pp. 109, 360, and in the ' Catalogue of Seals and Whales,' 

 I described the skull of this species. There is also in the Museum 

 a skull of a younger animal of the same species. 



Capt. Abbott, in 1866, sent to the British Museum a large and a 

 small Seal from the Falkland Islands. The large one was examined 

 and determined to be the southern Sea-lion (Otaria juhata). The 

 small one, nearly 3 feet long, was very similar in external appear- 

 ance ; and as the teeth, which could be seen without extracting the 

 skull, showed that it was a young animal, it was regarded as the 

 young of the Sea-lion, and it was stuffed without extracting the 

 skull, and labelled as such. This specimen has been examined by 

 several zoologists, among the rest by Dr. Peters, when engaged with 

 his paper on Eared Seals, and has passed unchallenged until this 

 time, thus showing how difficult it is to distinguish these animals 

 by their external characters alone. 



Capt. Abbott, who is now residing in England, informed me that 

 the smaller specimen was the Fur-Seal of the Falkland Islands, 

 that it grows to about half as long again as the specimen sent, and 

 that the old males are grey from the tips of the hairs. I have 

 therefore had the skull extracted from the specimen ; and there is 

 no doubt that it is quite distinct from the Sea-lion {Otaria juhata) ; 



