4^4 Bulletin American Museum of Natural History. [Vol. XVI, 



on the Siberian coast, to Erignathus barbatus, and the name 

 Largha to the larger spotted seal of the same region. 



The history of the use of the name Phoca largha Pallas is 

 briefly as follows: In 1850 (Cat. Seals, p. 54) and later (Cat. 

 Seals and Whales, 1870, p. 24) Dr. J. E. Gray identified it 

 with Temminck's Phoca nummularis. It having been found 

 that the spotted seals of the Pribilof and Commander Islands 

 were not Phoca vitulina, Pallas 's name largha has recently 

 been applied to them, without, however, any discussion of its 

 availability. It appears to have been first used in such a 

 connection by Dr. L. Stejneger in 1896, in his report on 'The 

 Russian Fur-seal Islands^ (Bull. U. S. Fish. Comm., Vol. 

 XVI, 1896, p. 21), where Phoca largha appears in a brief 

 enumeration of the marine mammals occurring on the Com- 

 mander Islands. When this report was republished two years 

 later in Jordan's ' Report on the Fur Seals and the Fur-Seal 

 Islands of the North Pacific ' (Part IV, 1898, p. 30) a footnote 

 was added, referring to the name Phoca largha, stating: 

 "During 1896 there were killed 49 'Nerpi' on Bering Island 

 and 22 on Copper Island," thus again connecting the name 

 Nerpa with Phoca largha. Mr. F. W. True in 1899 (Jordan's 

 Fur Seal Report, Part III, p. 351), in a paper on the 'Mam- 

 mals of the Pribilof Islands,' tentatively used the name 

 "Phoca largha Pallas ?" for "the hair seal found about the 

 islands," apparently taking Dr. Merriam as his authority for 

 its probable identification "with the P. largha of Pallas." 



It is doubtless on this basis that the name was used, passim, 

 in the same volume by Messrs. Stiles and Hassell in their 

 memoir on the 'Internal Parasites of the Fur Seal,' in enum- 

 erating the hosts of the various species of parasites there de- 

 scribed. The name has since been accepted in the same sense 

 by Mr. Witmer Stone (Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., 1901, p. 

 43); by Mr. D. G. Elliot (Synop. N. Am. Mamm., Dec., 1901, 

 p. 363), and by Miller and Rehn (N. Am. Mamm., Dec., 1901, 

 p. 194). The material now in hand and referred to respec- 

 tively by Stejneger, Merriam, True, and Stone, shows that the 

 name as used by these authors covers three very distinct 

 species, as will be shown later in the present paper. 



