OTAETADiE. 7 



less Seals (Phocidae). They have more power of using their limbs like 

 the more typical mammalia, walking on them with the body raised 

 from the ground ; they rest with their hind limbs bent forwards. 

 These habits are well shown in Dr. Forster's figures, engraved by 

 Buffon ; and they have been verified by the study of the living 

 Eared Seal in the Zoological Gardens. Their scrotum and genital 

 organs are exposed as in the Dog. 



The Otarice come to the surface during the process of mastication, 

 and do not, like the Eared Seals, swallow under the water. They 

 do not drink, while the common Seal occasionally sucks in water 

 as a horse would. The pupils of the eyes dilate and contract to an 

 enormous extent. 



The Sea-bears (Otariadce) inhabit the more temperate and colder 

 parts of the southern hemisphere, and the temperate and more 

 northern regions of the Pacific Ocean. 



The Otarice appear to make periodical migrations towards the 

 south; and the Sea-lions (0. juhata) come to the Falkland Islands in 

 November, where they remain till June or July, when the greater 

 number depart; but some remain there the whole year round 

 (P.Z.S. 1869, p. 108). 



Navigators, from the general external resemblance of the animals, 

 have regarded the Sea-lion and Ssa-bear of the northern and 

 seuthern regions as the same animal. Pennant (who paid con- 

 siderable attention to Seals) and most modern zoologists have done 

 the same. 



Nilsson, in his excellent Monograph of the Seals, only mentions 

 three species of Eared Seal : — 1, Otaria jubata; 2, 0. tirsina ; and, 3, 

 0. australis. He believed that the first was common to the Falk- 

 land Islands, Chile, Brazil, New Holland, and Kamtschatka, and the 

 second to Magellan's Straits, Patagonia, New Holland, and the Cape. 

 We now know that the species have a very limited geographical 

 distribution. 



When I published my ' Catalogue of the Seals in the British Mu- 

 seum,' in 1850, I was satisfied from Steller's description that the 

 species he described from the Arctic regions were distinct from those 

 found in the Southern seas ; and when I at last succeeded in obtain- 

 ing specimens and skulls from the northern regions of the Pacific, 

 I not only found that my idea was confirmed, but that they did not 

 even belong to the same genera. I had the skulls of these species 

 figured in the * Proceedings of the Zoological Society ' for 1 859, and 

 thus greatly extended the knowledge of the animals. But there is 

 yet much to be learnt respecting them. We do not know the species 

 of Fur-seal described by For.ster as inhabiting the coast of New 

 Zealand. 



The skull of these animals changes so much in form as the animal 

 arrives at adult and old age that it is not always easy to determine 

 the species by it, unless you have a series of them, of different ages 

 and states, to compare. Thus Dr. Peters, in his revision of the 

 genus after the publication of my Catalogue and figures of the skulls 

 in the * Voyage of the Erebus and Terror ' and in the ' Proceedings 



