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Show 510 PROF. FLOWER ON PHOCA HISPIDA. [Julie 6, withdrawing that of firtida. I am further strengthened in this opinion by finding that those eminent Danish naturalists Steenstrup * and Reinhardt f both use hispida when speaking of this Seal. The name may perhaps be objected to as not strictly appropriate ; but a similar objection might also be made to the others; and this is a dangerous ground for superseding the law of priority in a case where the name can be hardly said to " imply a false proposition which is likely to propagate important errors" J. This Seal, which is the Floe-rat or Flaar-rat oi the Northern English and Scottish Sealers, appears to be essentially a boreal species. Mr. R. Brown (" O n the Seals of Greenland," P. Z. S. 1868, p. 415) says, "In the Spitzbergen sea they appear to be confined to high latitudes, and especially to the parallels of 76° and 77° N.; and it is in these latitudes that the whalers chiefly find them. In Davis's Strait it is to be found all the year round, but particularly up the ice-fjords. Its capture constitutes the most important feature of the Seal-hunt in North Greenland; but many are also killed in South Greenland, the Neitsik figuring largely in the trade-returns of that Inspectorate." Nilsson speaks of it as being found on all the Scandinavian coasts, and as having been met with as far south as the Channel, on the strength of specimens in the Paris Museum from that locality; but he was unable to find any proof of its having been met with on the coast of England. Nor have I been able to discover any positive evidence that it can at the present day be reckoned a British species, although there is little doubt that it must occasionally visit our shores, where its occurrence would be easily overlooked. As conjectured by Lloyd §, it may be identical with the Bodack or Old Man of the Hebrides, described by J. Wilson as the smallest and most rare of the indigenous Seals of those islands ||-though, on the other hand, Edmonston does not include it in his account of the Seals found in the Shetland Islands, and appears even to doubt its existence *-|[. Recently Professor Turner has shown that the numerous remains of Seals found in the various beds of clay of the glacial period in the south-eastern portion of Scotland should be referred to P. hispida **. I must now advert to the characters by which the skull in the Norwich Museum has been determined to belong to this species. * " MelketandsEettet hos Remmesaden, Svartsiden og Fjordsaden (Phoca barbata, O. Fabr., Ph. grbnlandica, O. Fabr., og Ph. hispida, Schr.)," Vid Medd f. d. Naturh. Forening, 1800. Kjobh. 1861, s. 251-261. t " O m Klapmydsens ufodte TJnge og dens Melketandsjet," Naturh. Foren. Vidensk. Meddelelser, 1864. \ Report of Nomenclature Committee, British Association, 1842. § Game Birds and Wild Fowl of Sweden and Norway, 1867, p. 399. || " Notes regarding the distinctive habits of the Scotch PhoccB," Mag. Zool & Bot. vol. i. 1837, p. 539. 1[ " O n the Distinctions, History, and Hunting of Seals in the Shetland Islands," Mem. Werner. Soc. Nat. Hist. vol. viii. pt. 1, 1839, pp. 1-48. ** Journal of Anatomy and Physiology, May 1870, p. 260. |
