393 GEOGEAPHICAL AND GEOLOGICAL DISTRIBUTION. 



■waters of the Canary Archipelago, and an allied form (M. tropicalis) 

 the shores of the West India islands and Florida. The species of 

 the Caspian Sea (Phoca Caspica) is by many authors identified with 

 the common harbour seal of the North Atlantic and Pacific oceans 

 (P. vitulina), and the seal of Lake Baikal (P. Sibirica) with the 

 northern ringed-seal, P. f oetida. The greater number of the south- 

 ern forms are generically distinct from the northern, of which last 

 about one-half have a circumpolar distribution. It has been thus 

 far impossible to determine the exact range of the difEerent species 

 of seal, but it appears that, of the northern forms, the harbour-seal 

 is the most widely distributed. On the American coast it has been 

 noted as far south as New Jersey and the Santa Barbara Islands, 

 Californiaj and is reported to have been also observed near Beaufort, 

 North Carolina. Along the European coast it is not rare ofi the 

 coasts of Spain and France, and is even said to occasionally enter 

 the Mediterranean. The most northerly species appears to be the 

 ringed-seal, which has been met with considerably beyond the 

 eighty-second parallel of latitude. The Greenland or harp-seal 

 (P. Groenlandica) appears to be a permanent inhabitant of the St. 

 Lawrence River. The more aberrant forms of the family are the 

 hooded-seal (Cystophora cristata), from the colder parts of the 

 North Atlantic,* and the sea-elephants (Macrorhinus), of which 

 there are two generally recognised species, one of which (M. an- 

 gustirostris) appears to^e confined to the coasts of California and 

 Western Mexico, and the other, the southern sea-elephant (M. 

 elephantinus or leoninus), to the waters of the southern oceans 

 (Patagonia, Juan Fernandez, Kerguelen Land, Macquarie Island). 

 Theformer species is now almost completely exterminated. 



With the exception of some doubtful fragments described from 

 European museums, the only unequivocal remains of Otaridae have 

 thus far been described from the Pliocene deposits of Victoria, 

 Australia, and the Post-Pliocene of New Zealand. The remains of 

 the walrus have been found in the Post-Pliocene deposits of various 

 parts of North America — south to New Jersey and South Carolina 

 — while in Europe its representatives appear to be traced back to 

 the Pliocene, or even late Miocene, period. Most of the so-called 

 trichecoid remains, however, have been shown by Van Beneden to 



* An individual of this species was obtained in November, 1888, at Spring 

 Lake, New Jersey (Brown, "Am. Naturalist," xvii., p. 1191). 



