OCEANIC MAMMALS 437 



palm, 300; ear, 36. Basal length of skull, 260-272 mm. (The 

 above details are from J. A. Allen, 1905.) 



The skull as a whole is longer than in A. australis, the pos- 

 terior part much longer, rostral part longer and more sloping, 

 nasals longer and narrower, and the dentition much heavier, 

 with the accessory cusps absent or very small. The sagittal 

 crest is strongly developed. 



The distribution of this fur seal is given by J. A. Allen 

 (1905, p. 132) as "from the Straits of Magellan northward 

 along the west coast of South America to the Galapagos 

 Archipelago." "Numerous records" are mentioned of their 

 capture "at many points on the coast of Chili, at the Chincha 

 Islands, and in the Bay of Callao on the coast of Peru." The 

 chief congregating places for breeding, however, seem to have 

 been the small islands of Masafuera and Juan Fernandez off 

 the coast of central Chile; the little group comprising St. 

 Felix, St. Ambrose, and St. Marys Islands, about 9 of latitude 

 farther north and on the same meridian of 80; and the islands 

 of the Galapagos group, especially Albemarle and Wenman 

 Islands. Although, in 1904, Heller named the fur seal of the 

 last group as a distinct species^ it is, according to J. A. Allen 

 (1905), indistinguishable from typical A. philippii, the range 

 of which therefore includes the cooler waters of the Humboldt 

 Current flowing northward along the west coast of South 

 America. This current, as Dr. R. C. Murphy has at various 

 times pointed out, is responsible for carrying far toward the 

 Equator many marine forms that frequent cool water, and 

 are otherwise of sub-Antarctic distribution. 



A history of fur-seal hunting on these groups of islands has 

 been published by J. A. Allen (in Jordan and others, 1899, p. 

 309) from which the following notes are extracted. Masafuera 

 when first discovered in 1563, "swarmed with fur seals," but 

 they apparently were unmolested until 1792, when the ship 

 Eliza of New York secured a cargo of 38,000 skins which were 

 taken to Canton and sold for $16,000. In 1798 Capt. Edmund 

 Fanning, of the ship Betsey, also from New York, visited the 

 island and secured the better part of 100,000 sealskins there. 

 These also were disposed of at Canton. In leaving the island 

 he estimated that there were still left in this rookery between 

 500,000 and 700,000 seals. Capt. A. Delano tells that about 

 this time there were, on one of his visits, people from 14 ships 



