10 SEALS OF THE SHETLAND ISLANDS. 



of course all that his active industry and intelligence could 

 accumulate on the subject, and as his work is the latest 

 with which I at least am acquainted, I may assume that it 

 contains all that was known of this presumed species at the 

 period of its publication. But he does not give any de- 

 scription of it but what perfectly applies to the male of the 

 Great Seal of our coasts, which I have already described. 

 He has, it is true, figured a cranium of a different species 

 from the HafF-fish, as that of the animal in question, but 

 he says nothing of the history of the individual to which it 

 belonged. This cranium may prove that there is another 

 species of large seal, but not that it is an inhabitant of our 

 coast. The figure of it looks very like that of the male bar- 

 bata, with the exception of the teeth. I have not seen a spe- 

 cimen or a description of the cranium of the Phoca cristata, 

 but I suspect this may be found to be an example of one. 



Fabricius is, by many, considered to be an authority of 

 great weight in Arctic zoology. As I have not his work be- 

 fore me, I cannot examine what he has written on this sub- 

 ject, but I remember when I perused it I was struck with 

 the number and inaccurate distinctions of his phocce, and I 

 know well that in some points of his ornithology he is not 

 to be relied on, as I have elsewhere shewn. So sceptical 

 am I of these phocal species of Fabricius, that I am inclined 

 to believe there are only two species peculiar to Green- 

 land, the cristata and Grcenlandica, their great and small 

 seals, just as the barbata and vitulina are more especially 

 ours. The specimen of Great Seal, mentioned in Ross's 

 Voyage, is clearly an adult but not aged male Haff-fish. 



The negative proof in opposition to the opinion of there 

 being another British Great Seal seems sufficiently con- 

 clusive. The male HafF-fish, as we have already seen, dif- 

 fers most remarkably from the female. If there were really 



