On the Fossil Fishes of Mount Lebanon. 237 



face of another young specimen of this Seal in the British 

 Museum, collected in the Australasian Sea by Mr. John Mac- 

 gillivray. 



The Eared Seals are collected for their oil and skins. Most 

 of the species have very dense under-fur of soft erect hairs be- 

 tween the base of the longer hairs. These are called " Fur- 

 Seals;" and the skins, when deprived of their long hairs, are 

 very valuable. The dressed furs of the various species and loca- 

 lities are of very different commercial and economic value. 

 The skins oiNeophoca lobata of Australia and Phocarctos Hookeri 

 of the Southern Ocean, being destitute of this under-fur, are 

 called Hair- Seals by the sealers. Their skins are of little com- 

 parative value, as they are only used like the skins of the Earless 

 Seals (Phocidse). 



I have not been able to identify the "Tiger Seal" of Musgrave 

 ('Cast away on the Auckland Islands,' pp. 7, 10, 18, 29, &c.), 

 which seems as abundant as the Sea- Lion of the same locality. 

 They are both probably un described. 



XXXIII. — Recent Researches on the Fossil Fishes of Mount 

 Lebanon. By MM. F. J. Pictet and A. Humbert*. 



That the fossil fishes of the coasts of Syria are among those 

 which have been longest known is shown by the mention of 

 them in De Joinville's ' Histoire de Saint-Louis.' This chro- 

 nicler tells us that, during the sojourn of the Crusaders at 

 Sayette (the ancient Sidon, now Sdida), "A certain marvellous 

 stone was brought to the king, in appearance like a quantity of 

 scales, of the which when one was raised you saw beneath, be- 

 tween the two stones, the shape of a fish of the sea. And the 

 fish was of stone, but nothing of its form was wanting, neither 

 eyes, nor fins, nor colour, any more than if it had been living. 

 The king asked for one of these stones, and found a tench in it, 

 of a brown colour and like any other tench." 



Various travellers, such as J. Korte, C. Lebrun, Volney, &c., 

 have also mentioned these fishes ; but Scheuchzer is the oldest 

 naturalist who, as far as we know, has paid any attention to 

 them. In his work 'Piscium Querulse et Vindicise,' published at 

 Zurich in 1708, we find a passage devoted to the fish figured in 

 Lebrun's * Voyage' (Cornelius de Bruyn), and another referring 

 to a specimen in the Woodward Collection. The Zurich natu- 



* Translated by A. O'Shaughnessy from a separate impression, com- 

 municated by the Authors, from the 'Archives des Sciences de la Biblio- 

 theque Universelle,' Geneva, June 1866. See also ' Nouvelles Recherches 

 sur les Poissons Fossiles du Mont Liban,' 1 vol., with })lates, by F. J. 

 Pictet and A. Humbert : Geneva, 1866. 



