510 PROF. FLOWER ON PHOCA HISPIDA. [June 6, 



withdrawing that of fa?tida. I am further strengthened in this 

 opinion by finding that those eminent Danish naturalists Steenstrup * 

 and Reinnardtf both use hispida when speaking of this Seal. 



The name may perhaps be objected to as not strictly appropriate ; 

 but a similar objection might also be made to the others ; and this 

 is a dangerous ground for superseding the law of priority in a case 

 where the name can be hardly said to " imply a false proposition 

 which is likely to propagate important errors" %. 



This Seal, which is the Floe-rat or Flaar-rat of the Northern 

 English and Scottish Sealers, appears to be essentially a boreal spe- 

 cies. Mr. R. Brown (" On the Seals of Greenland," P. Z. S. 1868, 

 p. 415) says, "In the Spitsbergen sea they appear to be confined 

 to high latitudes, and especially to the parallels of 7<>°and 77° N. ; 

 and it is in these latitudes that the whalers chiefly find them. In 

 Davis's Strait it is to be found all the year round, but particularly 

 up the ice-fjords. Its capture constitutes the most important feature 

 of the Seal-hunt in North Greenland ; but many are also killed in 

 South Greenland, the Neitsik figuring largely in the trade-returns 

 of that Inspectorate." Nilsson speaks of it as being found on all 

 the Scandinavian coasts, and as having been met with as far south 

 as the Channel, on the strength of specimens in the Paris Museum 

 from that locality ; but he was unable to find any proof of its 

 having been met with on the coast of England. 



Nor have I been able to discover any positive evidence that it 

 can at the present day be reckoned a British species, although there 

 is little doubt that it must occasionally visit our shores, where its 

 occurrence would be easily overlooked. 



As conjectured by Lloyd §, it may be identical with the Bodack 

 or Old Man of the Hebrides, described by J. Wilson as the smallest 

 and most rare of the indigenous Seals of those islands || — though, on 

 the other hand, Edmonston does not include it in his account of the 

 Seals found in the Shetland Islands, and appears even to doubt its 

 existence ^[. 



Recently Professor Turner has shown that the numerous remains 

 of Seals found in the various beds of clay of the glacial period in 

 the south-eastern portion of Scotland should be referred to P. 

 hispida **. 



I must now advert to the characters by which the skull in the 

 Norwich Museum has been determined to belong to this species. 



* " Melketandsasttet hos Bemmesivlen, Svartsiden og Fjordsrelen (Phoca bar- 

 bata, O. Fabr., Ph. gronlandica, O. Fabr., og Ph. Implda, Scbr.)," Vid. Medd. 

 f. d. Naturh. Forening, 1860. Kjobh. 1861, s. 251-261. 



t " Om Klapmydsens ufodte tinge og dens Melketandsast," Naturb. Foren. 

 Vidensk. Meddelelser, 1864. 



\ Eeport of Nomenclature Committee, British Association, 1842. 



§ Game Birds and Wild Fowl of Sweden and Norway, 1867, p. 399. 



|| " Notes regarding the distinctive babits of tbe Scotch Phocw,'' Mag. Zool. 

 & Bot. vol. i. 1837, p. 539. 



% " On tbe Distinctions, History, and Hunting of Seals in tbe Shetland Islands," 

 Mem. Werner. Soc. Nat. Hist. vol. viii. pt. 1, 1839, pp. ]-48. 



** Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, May 1870, p. 260. 



