109 
of Edinburgh, Session 1869 - 70 . 
locality was some 200 feet deeper than in the districts of Stratheden 
or of Errol, so that the change in the relative position of land and 
water which has taken place since that time has caused the Strath- 
eden clays to be elevated 150 feet above the present sea-level, 
whilst the Grangemouth clay is some 60 or 70 feet below it. 
I shall now proceed to inquire into the characters of the bones 
of the Grangemouth seal, with the view of determining — lssf. Whether 
the animal was of the same species as the seals whose bones have 
been found in beds of clay in Scotland by other naturalists ; and, 
2 d, Whether the species is or is not the common seal, Callocejphalus 
vitulinus , which now frequents our coasts. 
With regard to the first part of the inquiry, I have compared 
this Grangemouth seal with the Errol seal found by the Rev. Thomas 
Brown, with the skeleton from Stratheden, and with the bones of 
the Portobello seal, which form a part of the natural history 
collection in the Museum of Science and Art. I may mention, that 
the bones from Portobello have received some important additions 
since Dr Allman drew attention to them at the meeting of this 
Society ; for Dr Andrew Balfour, by whom they were discovered, 
has added to the collection one-half of the lower jaw and several 
teeth. 
As regards the Errol seal, the bones recovered were vertebras and 
ribs, of which two only, viz., the atlas and one of the lower cervical 
vertebras, have representatives in the Grangemouth skeleton. The 
Errol seal is an older animal, and the bones are larger and more 
completely ossified than those of the Grangemouth seal ; but when 
due allowance is made for the difference in age, their form and 
general characters are so much alike that I believe them to be 
animals of the same species. The materials for comparison with the 
Portobello and Stratheden seals are, fortunately, more complete ; for 
in them, as in the Grangemouth seal, the lower jaw and teeth are 
almost perfect, and the femur, scapula, and other bones are repre- 
sented in each skeleton. All three animals were immature, for the 
epiphyses of the thigh bones are not yet anchylosed to the shafts. 
The atlas of the Portobello seal is somewhat less in its antero- 
posterior diameter than in the one from Grangemouth, and the 
distance of the inferior dental foramen from the hinder end of the 
lower jaw is greater in the Portobello and the Stratheden than in the 
VOL. VII. 
