AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS. 255 



Great as it is, yet a short scliedvile * embraces the titles of all 

 the pinnipeds found in, on, and around the island-group. Of this 

 list the hair-seal f is the animal which has done so much to found 

 that erroneous popular and scientific opinion as to what a fur-seal 

 api^ears like. Phoca vituhna has, in this manner, given to the peo- 

 ple of the world a false idea of its relatives. It is so commonly dis- 

 tributed all over the littoral salt waters of the earth, seen in the 

 harbors of nearly every marine port, or basking along the loneliest 

 and least inhabited of desolate coasts far to the north, that every- 

 body has noticed it, if not in life, then in its stuffed skins at the 

 museums, sometimes very grotesquely mounted. This copy, set 

 everywhere before the eye of the naturalist, has rendered it so dif3&- 

 cult for him to correctly discriminate between the Fhocidce and the 

 Olariidre, that the synonymy of the Pinnipedla has been expanded 

 until it is replete with meaningless description and surmise. 



Although the hair-seal belongs to the great group of pinnipeds, 

 yet it does not have even a generic affinity with those seals with 

 which it has been so persistently grouped, namely, the fur-seal and 

 the sea-lion. It no more resembles them, than does the raccoon 

 a black or grizzly bear. 



I shall not enter into a detailed description of this seal ; it is 

 wholly superfluous, for excellent, and, I believe, trustworthy ac- 

 counts have been repeatedly jDublished by writers who have treated 

 of the subject as it was spread before their eyes on the coasts of 



"" The seal-life on the Pribylov Islands may be classified under the follow- 

 ing heads, namely: (1) The fur-seal, Callorhinus ursinus, the " kautickie " of 

 the Russians ; (3) the sea-lion, Eumetopias stelleri, the "seevitchie " of the Rus- 

 sians; (3) the hair-seal, Phoca titulina, the " nearhpahsky " of the Russians ; 

 (4) the walrus, Odobcumis obesus, the "morsjee" of the Russians. 



f The inconsequential numbers of the hair-seal around and on the Pribylov 

 Islands seem to be characteristic of all Alaskan waters and the northwest 

 coast ; also, the phocidse are equally scant on the Asiatic littoral margins. 

 Only the following four species are known to exist throughout the entire ex- 

 tent of that vast marine area, viz : 



Phoca rituUna — Everywhere between Bering Straits and California. 



Phoca fmtida — Plover Bay, Norton's Sound, Kuskokvim mouth, and Bris- 

 tol Bay, of Bering Sea ; Cape Seartze Kammin, Arctic Ocean, to Point Barrow. 



Evujnathus barbatus — Kamchatkan coast, Norton's Sound, Kuskokvim 

 mouth and Bristol Bay, of Bering Sea. 



Hiiitriophoca cqucstris — Yukon mouth and coast south to Bristol Bay, of 

 Bering Sea. 



