46 PHOCID^. 



Pallas described a small Seal from the Kurile Islands (Zool. Eosso- 

 Asiat. i. 107), which he regatds as the same as la petite Phoque of 

 Buffon (P. pusilla, Gmelin), imder the name of P. nigra. 



SteUer figures and describes a large Seal under the name of Vrsus 

 mariniis (Nov. Comm. Petrop. ii. 331. t. 15), which is the authority 

 for the Ursine Seal of Pennant (Quad. ii. 526) and Phoea ursina of 

 Schreber, Gmelin, and most succeeding authors. 



Forster, in Cook's Second Voyage (ii. 203), appears to speak of 

 the same animal under the name of " Sea Bear." 



No specimen of this species existed in any of the Museums which 

 I visited on the Contiaent or in England, nor could I find a skuU of 

 the genus from the Northern Pacific Ocean ; yet I felt so assured, 

 from SteUer's description and the geographical position, that it must 

 be distract from the Eared Fur-Seals from the Antarctic Ocean and 

 Australia, with which it has been usually confounded, that in the 

 ' Catalogue of Seals in the Collection of the British Museum ' I re- 

 garded it as a distinct species under the name oi Arctocephalus ursinus, 

 giving an abridgment of SteUer's description as its specific character. 



The name Arctocephalvs ursinus is usually applied to the various 

 species of Eared Eur-Seals found in the diflferent English and Con- 

 tinental Museums. 



The British Museum has just received from Amsterdam, under 

 the name Otaria leonina, a specimen of the Sea Bear from Behring's 

 Straits, which was obtained from St. Petersburg. It is evidently 

 not an Otaria, but a new genus allied to Aretoce/phalus, and agrees 

 in all its characters with the Sea Bear, Ursine marinus of SteUer, and 

 not with the Sea Lion or Leo marinus of that author, which is caUed 

 Otaria Stelleri in the catalogues, and was confounded with Otaria 

 leonina -of the Southern Pacific Ocean by Nilsson and most modern 

 authors. The latter animal is stiU a desideratum ia the British 

 Museum and other European CoUections. 



The skin is 8 feet long, and agrees in aU particulars with SteUer's 

 description of the adult male of the species, and is most distinct in 

 external character and colour from the Fur-Seal (ArctocepJmliis 

 Falhlandicm) of the Falkland Islands and from A. lohatus from 

 Australia. 



The skuU is equaUy distinct from the various skulls of aU the 

 species of the genus Aretocephalus (both !Fur- and Hair-Seals) which 

 are in the CoUection of the British Museum, and is easUy known 

 from them by the shortness of the face and the height and convexity 

 of the nose. 



The skuU of this specimen is quite distinct from the skuU of the 

 Aretocephalus Qilliespii of CaUfomia, recently described by Dr. Mac- 

 Baiu in the 'Proceedings of the Physical Society of Edinburgh,' 

 under the name of Otaria Gilliespii, from a skuU in the Edinburgh 

 Natural History Museum, of which we have a cast in the British 

 Museum : but we are not able to ascertain with certainty whether 

 this is a Fur- or Hair-Seal, though, from the length of the palate, 

 compared with the width of the skull at the hinder grinders, I am 

 induced to believe that it may belong to an animal which has a soft 



