484 WILD ANIMALS. 



grypus and Cystophora cristata, neither of wMch ranges so far 

 northward as the others, and the latter only casually wanders to 

 the southward of Newfoundland and the southern coast of Scandi- 

 navia, while the former reaches Nova Scotia and Ireland. Phoca 

 fmtida and Erignathus barhatus are the most northern of all, both 

 being winter residents of the icy shores of Davis's Straits and Jan 

 Mayen Island. It thus appears of the six species found on the 

 northern shores of Europe, Greenland, and the Atlantic coast of 

 North America, two only are confined to the North Atlantic, the 

 other four being common also to the North Pacific. The Histrio- 

 phoca fasciata, on the other hand, is limited to the North Pacific, 

 and is the only species occurring there that is not also found in 

 the North Atlantic. Consequently about one-half of the com- 

 monly recognized species of the Phocid^ of the Northern Hemi- 

 sphere have a circumpolar distribution." 



Andrew Murray makes the observation, that " perhaps the most 

 interesting circumstance in the distribution of the seals is the 

 existence of a species in the Caspian Sea, and another in Lake 

 Baikal, notwithstanding that the latter is wholly fresh water, and 

 that the former does not contain one-fourth of the usual saline 

 contents of sea- water. The species in the Caspian {Phoca 

 Gaspica) is described as very nearly allied to our common Phoca 

 vitulina, and that in Lake Baikal is equally close to Phoca foetida, 

 a species found in the North Atlantic, and but for their geo- 

 graphical position no one would think of separating them from 

 these species. In fact the one is the Phoca vitulina, and the other 

 the Phoca foetida {Phoca annellata, Nilss.) 



" One's first impression is so much opposed to the possibility 

 of such an occurrence as a marine animal inhabiting permanently 

 a fresh-water lake, that we naturally expect that there must be 

 some mistake about it, and that it may turn out that the animal 

 is an otter, or some unknown species, but there is no room for 

 doubt about the matter ; it is notorious and a commercial fact, 

 and your ledger is a sore destroyer of your theoretical assumptions. 

 A regular seal-fishery has for long been carried on in both waters, 

 and in Pallas' time the Baikal seal-fishery was of great importance, 

 and although much diminished since then, still, so late as 1859, 



