Il6 PATAGONIAN EXPEDITIONS: ZOOLOGY. 



described by Gray as a new species. Neither had he up to that time seen 

 a skull of the northern fur seal.^ 



Till many years after the middle of the nineteenth centur)' no one had 

 opportunity to recognize the great differences due to age and sex that ob- 

 tain in these animals ; and it was therefore not strange that when, some 

 years later, isolated skulls from different localities and of different ages 

 began to arrive at the British, Berlin, and other Museums, they should be 

 taken as the basis of supposed distinct species, with the result of adding 

 to the long array of synonyms that now cumber the literature of the subject. 

 It was not till about 1870 that sufficient material for determining the cranial 

 differences due to age and sex began to accumulate, when good series of 

 skulls and skeletons, as well as of skins, of the northern sea lions and 

 fur seals reached the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge, and 

 the National Museum in Washington, and also of the southern forms as 

 represented at the Galapagos Islands. 



Finally, as I stated in 1880:' "Of about fifty synonyms pertaining to 

 the Eared Seals, probably two thirds have been based, directly or indirectly, 

 upon differences dependent on sex and age, and the rest upon the defec- 

 tive descriptions of these animals by travellers." 



Figures. — The Southern Sea Lion has been figured repeatedly, both as 

 regards the skull and the animal. The early figures are naturally crude 

 and of little value ; the later ones meet all requirements of detail and ac- 

 curacy. In the following enumeration the principal illustrations of the 

 animal and its external features are first mentioned, and then those of the 

 skull and its general anatomy. 



Animal. — The first published figure of this species is probably that 

 given by Pernetty,'' in 1769, based on the sea lion of the Falkland Islands. 

 This, though a wretched caricature, was copied by Schreber to illustrate 

 his PJioca jitbata, and this fact constitutes the chief interest and impor- 

 tance of Pernetty's figure. 



'Dr. Gray, in iS64(P.Z. S., 1864, p. 34) said : " lam not aware that the Z(Yf;;/^;7«/« of Steller 

 exists in any Museum." In 1868, he wrote as follows : " When I published my ' Catalogue of 

 the Seals in the British Museum,' in 1850, 1 was satisfied from Steller's description that the species 

 he described from the Arctic regions were distinct from those found in the southern seas ; and 

 when I at last succeeded in obtaining specimens and skulls from the northern regions of the 

 Pacific, I not only found that my idea was confirmed, but that they did not belong to the same 

 genera." — Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. (4), I, Feb., 1868, p. 99. 



'Hist. N. Am. Pinnipeds, 1880, p. 227, footnote. 



'Voy. aux les lies Malouines, II, 1769, pi. viii, fig. i. 



