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Show 1868.] MR. R. BROWN ON THE SEALS OF GREENLAND. 405 2. Notes on the History and Geographical Relations of the Pinnipedia frequenting the Spitzbergen and Greenland Seas. By ROBERT B R O W N , F.R.G.S. &c. [Communicated by Dr. Murie.] CONTENTS. 1. Introduction, p. 405. 2. Physiological Remarks on the Habits of Seals, p. 407. 3. Habits and Instincts of Seals in general, p. 408. 4. Notes on the species of Pinnipedia, p. 411. 5. The Commercial Importance of the " Seal Fisheries," p. 438. 1. Introduction. In the introduction to a former paper* I had occasion to refer to the hazy uncertainty which surrounds the history of many of the Arctic Mammalia; preeminently is this true of the Cetacea, but scarcely-less so of the order Pinnipedia. Though the specific determination of the species in this group is more easily managed, and has, to a great extent, been accomplished, yet the end to which these determinations are made, viz. the history of the birth, the life, and the geographical distribution and migrations of the animals themselves, are yet almost unknown, or dependent on the authority of the old Greenland naturalists, many of whose observations, made in a day when the specific characters were less known, or but a limited portion of the Arctic Ocean explored, have been proved to be far beside the truth. Again, these observations were made on the coast of Greenland where none of our sealers go ; while in the Spitzbergen and Jan Mayen seas (the " Old Greenland " or " Greenland sea " of the whalers) the vast portion of the sealing of commerce is carried on for a few weeks each spring, but regarding the history of the Seals which form the prey of these hunters, the extent, commercial importance of the trade, and the migrations of these animals from one portion of the Arctic Sea to another we absolutely know nothing. Scientific purists forsooth (the Dr. Dryasdusts of zoology) may look upon the description of the process of a bone, or the elucidation of a dental tubercle, as the aim and end of all biological study ; but I again repeat that all this, though of the utmost value, is merely an atom in the description of the animal, and mainly important so far as it tends to render the specific determination of the animals whose life we are studying easier to the field naturalist. I cannot help looking upon natural history as the history of nature ; and to have a history of animated beings we must know something further about them than that the palate bone is notched, that the cervical vertebrae are anchylosed, or that the grinders have a posterior lobe. It is with this view that these fragmentary notes have been put together. The various writers on this group, as far as relates to Arctic zoology, I have already criticised in m y former paper, to which I beg leave to refer. In the spring of 1861, with a view to acquire a knowledge of the northern Seals of commerce, I accompanied a sealer * "On the Mammalian Fauna of Greenland" (P. Z. S. 1868, p. 330). PROC. ZOOL. SOC-1868, No. XXVII. |