Otarie de Péron, Blainville, Journ. de Physique, xci. p. 298; Cuvier, Oss. Fossiles, v. p. 220.
Otaria Houvillii, Lesson, Dict. Class. d’H. N. xiii. 425.
Phoca Houvillii, Fischer, Syn. Mam. p. 154. These three names are all from the same animal.
Inhab. Falkland Islands (Abbott; B.M.); New Georgia.
This is a most distinct species, and easily known from all the other Fur-Seals in the British Museum by the evenness, shortness, closeness, and elasticity of the fur, and the length of the under-fur. The fur is soft enough to wear as a rich fur without the removal of the longer hairs, which are always removed in the other Fur-Seals. Unfortunately the specimen is without any skull; and therefore I cannot give a description of the teeth, or refer it to any of the restricted genera of Otariadæ.
Mr. R. Hamilton, in the ‘Annals of Natural History’ for 1838, ii. p. 81, t. 4, gives the history of the Fur-Seals of commerce and the method of catching them; and he deposited two specimens in the Museum of Edinburgh, which had been procured by Capt. Weddel. Mr. Abbott having informed me that what I had described under the name of Arctocephalus falklandicus is not now found in the Falkland Islands, and Mr. Bartlett having shown me an imperfect skin of the same species, which he had obtained from a fur-monger, who informed him that such fur-skins were only received from the Arctic part of the Pacific Ocean, I was induced to request Mr. Archer, director of the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art, to allow me to examine the Seals described by Mr. Hamilton, which, on examination, proved to be my Arctocephalus falklandicus, only differing from the Museum specimen in the fur being considerably darker and harsher; and, from Capt. Weddel’s account as given in the ‘Annals,’ these specimens came from South Georgia or South Shetland. These Seals, which were brought from the Antarctic Ocean, may formerly have inhabited the Falkland Islands, and, like the Sea-lion found there by Pernetty, have been destroyed or driven away. Arctocephalus Hookeri is said to be now found in the Antarctic Ocean and the Falkland Islands. In that case it may be the Falkland-Island Seal of Pennant.
The A. falklandicus is very like the Fur-Seal from Australia (H. cinereus) in the length of the under-fur as compared with the length of the hairs, and also in the colour of the under-fur and hair; but the fur is much softer, and its general colour is much darker, both above and below.
Pennant describes the “Falkland-Island Seal” from a specimen 4 feet long, in the museum of the Royal Society, thus:—“Hair short, cinereous, tipped with dirty white;” “grinders conoid, with a small process on one side near the base.” It is to this description that Dr. Shaw applied the name of Phoca falklandica (Gen. Zool. i. p. 256). This agrees with a specimen in the Museum in all particulars. It certainly is not the dark blackish-brown Seal which I have described as the Arctocephalus nigrescens, and which Dr. Peters calls O. falklandica.
I sent a piece of the fur of this Seal to Dr. Peters to be compared with the fur of O. Philippii. He observes, “They appear to be quite different; the wool of O. falklandica is fair and has more similarity in colour to the young of O. cinerea. The wool of O. Philippii is entirely ferruginous red, and the longer hairs are stiffer and have a much shorter grey tip than in O. falklandica.”