462 Mr. Selby on the Great Seal of the Farn Islands. 
LIII.— Observations on the Great Seal of the Farn Islands, 
showing it to be the Halichzrus griseus, Nélss., and not the 
Phoca barbata. By P. J. Sevpy, Esq., F.L.S., &c., &c. 
Tue Rev. L. Jenyns, in his valuable ‘ Manual of British Ver- 
tebrate Animals,’ and Mr. Bell, in his ‘ History of British Qua- 
drupeds,’ having quoted my name as an authority for the 
occurrence of the Phoca barbata upon the coast of Northum- 
berland, I consider it incumbent upon me, now that I feel 
satisfied of having mistaken the species, to make known, 
through the medium of the ‘ Annals,’ that the Seal, which I 
had supposed to be the Phoca barbata, proves upon further 
investigation to belong to a different generic division of the 
group, and is the Halicherus griseus of Nilsson, and of Bell’s 
‘ British Quadrupeds.’ At the time my notice of the Great 
Seal inhabiting the immediate vicinity of the Farn Islands 
first appeared, and which is to be found in the concluding 
paragraph of a descriptive Catalogue of the Birds that inhabit 
and breed upon that group of islands, published in 1826, in 
the second volume of the ‘ Zoological Journal, the natural 
history of this curious but interesting group of Mammals had 
been but little attended to by any of our own naturalists, and 
in consequence the species inhabiting our coasts were imper- 
fectly known and ill-defined, the Seals of a smaller size going 
under the title of Phoca vitulina, and the larger under the ge- 
neral name of the Great Seal. 
At this period the generic divisions of the group were only 
beginning to undergo that necessary revision which a more 
intimate knowledge of the peculiar characters of the species 
required, and which has been so ably effected by the labours 
of Baron Cuvier, his brother M. F. Cuvier, and Professor 
Nilsson of Lund. The characters of the genus Halicherus 
were consequently at that time unknown to me; and not being 
in possession of the crania of any other species of Seals, except © 
that of P. vitulina, wherewith to compare that of the Farn 
Island species, I concluded, from the great size of the latter, 
together with Pennant’s notice of the “ Great Seal” sometimes 
met with at the Orkneys, and considered by subsequent writers 
as the P. barbata, and again, from the Farn animal agreeing 
with the specimen deposited in the British Museum, and long 
considered as the P. darbaia, that it belonged to the same 
species; and as such it was accordingly named inthe short 
notice to which I have referred. My attention was, however, 
again directed to this animal, in consequence of what took 
place at the Meeting of the British Association held at Bris- 
tol, where Professor Nilsson, who was present, identified the 
