ALLEN: mammalia: otariid/G. 103 



shown later) the specific name jubata, and giving a new name to the latter, 

 which unfortunately proves to be untenable.' 



In 181 7 G. Fischer, evidently ignorant that Peron had established the 

 generic name Otaria for the Eared Seals, proposed for them the name 

 Ofocs,- basing his name entirely on G. Cuvier's "Les Phoques k oreilles 

 exterieures," in the " R<^gne Animal" (I, 181 7, p. 166), his own account 

 of which is an unabridged paraphrase of Cuvier's, even to Cuvier's error in 

 respect to the incisors. He cites as referable to it '' Plioca jiibata, iirsiiia, 

 Lin. Gmel.," in other words, the Sea Lions [Phoca jttbata auct.) and the 

 Sea Bears [Phoca iirsina auct.) as they were known to Cuvier and 

 naturalists generally at the time, who believed there were only one spe- 

 cies of each, both common to the Arctic and Antarctic regions. No one 

 but Peron appears to have thought otherwise for the next ten years ; even 

 as late as 1823, G. Cuvier spoke ^ derisively of Peron's assumption that 

 none of the seals of the "hemisphere antarctique" were "de meme espece 

 que ceux du nord." 



It consequently happens that the genus Otoes Fischer, 181 7, is an exact 

 synonym of Otaria Peron, 1816. It is therefore inadmissable to assume, 

 as has been recently done,'* that the name Otoes is available for the 

 northern Fur Seals, on the ground that what Fischer did "was simply to 

 apply a generic name to Cuvier's group [= "Otaries Peron"] whose name 

 Cuvier avowedly took, which .... w^as based chiefly on the northern and 

 not the southern fur seal." While the first part of this statement is per- 

 fectly correct, the latter is not, Cuvier's Phoca ttrsina including a southern 

 Fur Seal [''Phoca pusilla') and a southern Sea Lion ("le phoque jaune 

 de Shaw, etc.,"), as well as a citation of "Buff, Supp. VII [lege VI], pi. 

 xlvii," which plate Buffon states is after a design from nature by Forster, 

 which, as all investigators of the group know, relates to the Fur Seal of 



' The following quotations from Peron show the manner in which the two names Otaria leoniiia 

 and Otaria jttbata were introduced. Peron (/. c, p. 40, in the text) says : " . . . (Forster, 2" 

 Voy. de Cook, torn VIII, pag. 56). L'auteur parle ici de I'Otaria Leonina, N." " ; and adds in a 

 footnote to the same page : 



" " Quclque singulier que puisse etre le phenomene dont il s'agit, il n'est pas cependant particulier 

 aux grands Phocaces des regions Australes, Steller a observe quelque chose d'analogue sur le 

 Lion marin du Nord [Otaria jubata, N.]" — and then follows a quotation from Steller. 



'Mem. Soc. Imp. des Nat. de Moscou, V, 1817, p. 445. 



'Ossem. foss., V, 1823, p. 218. 



* Cf. Palmer, Proc. Biol. Soc. Washington, XIV, pp. 133, 134, Aug. 9, 1901. 



