18(58.] MR. R. BROWN ON THE SEALS OF GREENLAND. 40.5 



2. Notes on the History and Geographical Relations of the 

 Pinnipedia frequenting the Spitzbergen aiid Greenland 

 Seas, By Robert Brown, P.R.G.S. &c. 



[Communicated by Dr. Murie.] 



Contents. 



1. Introduction, p. 405. 



2. Physiological Remarks on the Habits of Seals, p. 407. 

 '^. Habits and Instincts of Seals in general, p. 408. 



4. Notes on the species of Pinnipedia, p. 411. 



5. The Commercial Importance of tlie " Seal Fisheries," p. 438. 



1 . Introduction. 



In the introduction to a former paper* I had occasion to refer to the 

 hazy uncertainty which surrounds the history of many of the Arctic 

 Mammaha ; preeminently is tliis true of the Cetacea, but scarcely 

 less so of the order Pinnipedia. Though the specific determination 

 of the species in this group is more easily managed, and has, to a 

 great extent, been accomplished, yet the end to which these deter- 

 minations are made, viz. the history of the birtli, the life, and the 

 geographical distribution and migrations of the animals themselves, are 

 yet almost unknown, or dependent on the authority of the old Green- 

 land naturalists, many of whose observations, made in a day when 

 the specific characters were less known, or but a limited portion of 

 the Arctic Ocean explored, have been proved to be far beside the 

 truth. Again, these observations were made on the coast of Green- 

 land where none of our sealers go ; while iii the Spitzbergen and 

 Jan Mayen seas (the "Old Greenland" or "Greenland sea" of the 

 whalers) the vast portion of the sealing of commerce is carried on for 

 a few weeks each spring, but regarding the history of the Seals which 

 form the prey of these hunters, the extent, commercial importance 

 of the trade, and the migrations of these animals from one portion of 

 the Arctic Sea to another we absolutely know nothing. Scientific 

 purists forsooth (the Dr. Dryasdusts of zoology) may look upon 

 the description of the process of a bone, or tlie elucidation of a dental 

 tubercle, as the aim and end of all biological study ; but I again 

 repeat that all this, though of the utmost value, is merely an atom 

 in the description of the animal, and mainly important so far as it 

 tends to render the specific determination of the animals whose life 

 we are studying easier to the field naturalist. I cannot help look- 

 ing upon natural history as the history of nature ; and to have a history 

 of animated beings we must know something further about them 

 than that the palate bone is notched, that the cervical vertebrse are 

 anchylosed, or that the grinders have a posterior lobe. 



It is with this view that these fragmentary notes have been put 

 together. The various writers on this group, as far as relates to 

 Arctic zoology, I have already criticised in my former paper, to which 

 I beg leave to refer. In the spring of 1861, with a view to acquire a 

 knowledge of the northern Seals of commerce, I accompanied a sealer 

 » "On the MammaUan Fanna of Greenland" (P. Z. S. 1868, p. .330). 



Proc. Zool. Soc— 18G8, No. XXVII. 



