88 PATAGONIAN EXPEDITIONS: ZOOLOGY. 



PJioca homei Lesson, Diet, class. d'Hist. Nat, XIII, 1828, 417. New 



name for PJioca leptonyx Blainville. 

 Hydnirga leptonyx R. J. P[ocock], Rep. Southern Cross Coll., 1902, 26 

 (footnote). 



This species is unrepresented in the collections made by the Princeton 

 University Expeditions to Patagonia, but it has been repeatedly recorded 

 from the Falkland Islands. Dr. Sclater (P. Z. S., 1868, 527) states that 

 Mr. A. A. Lecompte shot, in 1867, "a single Sea Leopard [Stenorhynchits 

 leptonyx) in a remote part of Stanley Harbour, being the only specimen 

 of this animal met with during his stay in the Falklands." Captain C. C. 

 Abbott (/. r., p. 192), during his residence there, met only a single speci- 

 men, "washed ashore dead near Port Louis." Mr. Barrett-Hamilton also 

 records two skulls in the British Museum taken on the Falkland Islands, 

 in the list of specimens given by him in his paper on the Mammalia of 

 the Soitthern Cross Collections (pp. 32, 33). 



The several recent South Polar expeditions report this seal as found in 

 some frequency on the pack-ice near Graham Land and Victoria Land, 

 where it is the most numerous of the several species found in these high 

 latitudes. It has been taken also at New Georgia and on the shores of 

 New Zealand. 



The type locality of Phoca leptonyx Blainville may be considered as 

 somewhat in doubt, as it is evident that the specimen described (/. c, pp. 

 297, 298) in connection with the bestowal of the name (on p. 298) must be 

 considered as the type, rather than Blainville's specimen No. 2 ("2°. Sea 

 lion from islands Falckland"), described on pages 287 and 288. The 

 former — the type specimen — he says "i ete rapportee des mers du sud, 

 et, ^ ce qu'il paroit, des environs des lies Falckland ou Malouines." The 

 other specimen, belonging to the "college des chirurgiens a Londres," 

 and labelled as from the Falkland Islands, was, two years later, described 

 and figured by Home (/. c.) as a "Seal from New Georgia," which place 

 appears to have been the correct locality of the specimen.^ It is apparently, 

 therefore, fair to assume the Falkland Islands as the type locality rather 

 than the Island of New Georgia. 



The history of this seal is very fully given by Mr. Barrett-Hamilton in 



' On this point see Barrett-Hamilton, who has gone into the history of tliese two important 

 specimens in considerable detail in his Report on the Mammalia of the Soiitlieni Cross Expedi- 

 tion (pp. 26, 27). 



