THE HARP SEAL: DISTEIBUTIOJS, AMD USES. 63 



appears not to advance so far northward as the Ringed Seal or the Bearded Seal; yet the icy seas 

 of the north are pre-eminently its home. It is not found on the Atlantic coast of North America 

 in any numbers south of Newfoundland. A few are taken at the Magdalen Islands, and while on 

 their way to the Grand Banks some must pass very near the Nova Scotia coast. Dr. Gilpin, 

 however, includes it only provisionally among the Seals that visit the shores of that Province. It 

 doubtless occasionally wanders, like the Crested Seal, to points far south of its usual range, as I 

 find a skeleton of this species in the collection of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, bearing 

 the legend " Nahant, Mass., L. Agassiz." I have at times felt doubtful about the correctness of 

 the assigned locality, as this seems to be the only proof of the occurrence of this species on the 

 Massachusetts coast. I have, however, recently been informed by Dr. C. C. Abbott, of New Jersey, 

 that a Seal, described to him as being about six feet long, white, with a broad black band along 

 each side of the back, was taken near Trenton, in that State, during the winter of 1878-'79. This 

 description can of course refer to no other species than Phoca groenlandica, and as it comes from 

 a wholly trustworthy source it seems to substantiate the occasional occurrence of this species as 

 far south as New Jersey. Von Heuglin gives it as ranging "in den amerikanischen Meeren 

 Slid warts bis New York," ^ but I know not on what authority. 



The Harp Seals are well known to be periodically exceedingly abundant along the shores of 

 Newfoundland, where, during spring, hundreds of thousands are annually killed. In their migra- 

 tions they pass along the coast of Labrador, and appear with regularity twice a year off the coast 

 of Southern Greenland. Capt. J. C. Eoss states that in Baffin's Bay they keep mostly "to the 

 loose floating floes which constitute what is termed by the whale-fishers ' the middle ice' of Baffin's 

 Bay and Davis' Straits." He says he never met with them in any part of Prince Eegent's Inlet, 

 but states that they are reported by the natives to be very numerous on the west side of the 

 Isthmus of Boothia, but that they are not seen on the east side.^ They are well-known visitors to 

 the shores of Iceland, and swarm in the icy seas about Jan Mayen and Spitzbergen. They also 

 occur about Nova Zembla, and Payer refers to their abundance at Franz Josef Land. They occur 

 in the Kara Sea, and along the arctic coast of Europe. Malmgren, Lilljeborg, and Collett state 

 that it is of regular occurrence on the coast of Finmark, where it occurs in small numbers from 

 October and November till February. Although reported by Bell and others as having been taken 

 in the Severn, and by Saxby as observed at Baltasound, Shetland, the capture of a specimen in 

 Morecombe Bay, England, reported by Turner in 1874, Mr. E. E. Alston says is "the first British 

 specimen that has been properly identified." 



The distribution of this species in the North Pacific is not well known. Pallas (under the 

 name Phoca dorsata) records it from Kamtchatka, where its occurrence is also afi&rmed by Steller. 

 Temminck mentions having examined three skins obtained at Sitka, but adds that it was not 

 observed by "les voyageurs n^erlandais" in Japan. In the collections in the National Museum 

 from the North Pacific this species is unrepresented, the species thus far received from there being 

 the following four, namely : Phoca vitulina, Phoca fcetida, Urignathios barbatus, and Histriophoca 

 fasciata. 



Hunting and products. — As so large a part of what has been already said in the general 

 account of the seal fishery of the North Atlantic and Arctic waters necessarily relates to the 

 present species, it is scarcely requi^site in the present connection to more than reca]]< the leading 

 points of the subject, with the addition of a few details not previously given. As already stated, 

 the sealing grounds par excellence are the ice-floes off' the eastern coast of Newfoundland and around 



'Von Heuglin: Eeisen nach deni Nordpolarmeer, p. 56. 



* Carroll: Seal and Herring Fisheries of Newfoundland, p. 26. 



