I 9 02.] Allen, North Pacific Phocidce. 479 



molar, 42 ; front of intermaxillas to meatus auditorius, 96; palatal length 

 (on median line) , 58 ; palato-maxillary suture to anterior border of fora- 

 men magnum, 86; palatal width between the molars, 27.5; length of 

 upper premolar-molar series, 29; length of nasals, 35 ; breadth of nasals 

 at middle, 5.5; least interorbital breadth, 7; length of brain-case, 65; 

 greatest width of brain-case, 82 ; length of lower jaw, 86 ; length of lower 

 premolar-molar series, 30. 



The skins have lain saturated with oil for nearly two years, and doubt- 

 less the general color has thereby been more or less altered. The upper 

 surface is now yellowish brown, the sides and back inconspicuously 

 marbled with dark brown or blackish; the spots are irregular in size and 

 shape, and are often confluent. The ventral surface is yellowish white, 

 wholly unspotted. 



The small spotted seal of Bering Sea has commonly been 

 referred to Phoca hispida. I have had before me some 30 or 

 more skulls from Bering Sea and adjacent waters (5 from St. 

 Michaels, i from Unalakleet, i from Port Clarence, i from 

 Point Barrow, and 3 from Plover Bay, Siberia) which present 

 no tangible differences from a large series from Greenland. 

 On the other hand, the two female skulls from Gichiga are 

 notably smaller, with relatively much weaker dentition. A 

 larger series from the Okhotsk Sea might bridge over the differ- 

 ence in size, but there are strongly marked differences in 

 other features. Although there is a wide range of individual 

 variation in size among female skulls of Phoca hispida, I find 

 none in the large series now available for examination as 

 small as the two Gichiga skulls, in which the length is 12 to 15 

 mm. shorter than in average specimens of P. hispida. 



More important differences consist in the much weaker den- 

 tition, and in the relative length of the premaxillary portion 

 of the palatal floor and the correlated differences in the length 

 and shape of the anterior palatine foramina. The upper 

 toothrow is about one-tenth shorter than in the smallest 

 Greenland and Bering Sea examples, and the teeth them- 

 selves are more than correspondingly less robust than this 

 difference would necessarily imply, the teeth being very nar- 

 row in their transverse breadth and hence far more delicate in 

 general size and structure. 



The anterior palatine foramina are relatively much shorter 

 and broader than in P. hispida, with a quite different contour, 



