ALLEN: mammalia: otariid^. 141 



"Mr. Townsend sailed from San Diego on May 14, 1892, reached 

 Guadalupe on the i6th, and remained there until the 27th. He saw 

 seven fur seals and shot one, which sank before it could be recovered. 

 The trip was made too early in the season to find the seals on shore. A 

 locality was visited where it was known that a large number had been 

 killed a few years previously, and here four skulls were obtained. These 

 skulls were immediately sent to Washington, and on their arrival, were 

 examined by Dr. J. A. Allen, Dr. Theodore Gill and myself, and proved, 

 as had been suspected, to belong to the genus Ardocephalns. A joint 

 note to this effect was published by us in the "Fur Seal Arbitration, Ap- 

 pendix to the Case of the United States," Vol. I, p. 586, 1892. In the 

 same volume (p. 373) Dr. Allen expresses the belief that the skulls in 

 question represent an undescribed species. The northernmost locality 

 from which the genus had been previously recorded is the Galapagos 

 Islands under the equator, about 2,500 miles southeast of Guadalupe. 



"In his manuscript report on the Guadalupe trip Mr. Townsend states: 

 'Guadalupe Island is thoroughly volcanic and there are caves by the dozen 

 along every mile of the shoreline which were once the retreats of thous- 

 ands of fur seals. On the afternoon of May 17 we saw four seals swim- 

 ming some distance off shore. Two of these we believed to be fur seals, 

 but could not get within shooting distance, although we tried for an hour. 

 The other two, seen later, were undoubtedly Zalopluts. No seals what- 

 ever were found on the rocks. . . . On May 22 we examined SW Point 

 and the three islands or rocks south of it. On the most southerly rock 

 we found a band of Zalopluts, about thirty in number, hauled out. There 

 was no fur seals among them. Passing the point, we continued, pulling 

 in the dory, the schooner lying to off shore, up the west side of the island 

 about eight miles, where we anchored. In the evening we visited the 

 spot where Borges and Sisson had killed two or three hundred fur seals 

 about ten years before. Only a few weather-worn skulls were found, 

 which we gathered for shipment to Washington. The next day. May 

 23, we hunted along shore, in the boat as usual, as far as the next point 

 south of NW Point about six miles, the schooner keeping well off shore. 

 At 10 A.M., near the outlying rocks off this point, we found what seemed 

 to be a male fur seal, perhaps about four years old, asleep on the water 

 with his fins held aloft in the manner so characteristic of these animals. 

 I got a pretty fair shot with the rifle but missed. Half an hour later I 



