According to figures, the form of the skull and the large size of the orbit are very similar to those of Phocarctos Hookeri, but the number and form of the teeth are different.
In the ‘Monatsbericht,’ May 1866, p. 276, t. 2. a, b, c, Dr. Peters described and figured with considerable detail a skull of a Sea-bear (sent to the Berlin Museum by Dr. Philippi, who obtained it at Juan Fernandez Island) under the name of Otaria Philippi, forming for it a subgenus which he calls Arctophoca. In his revision of that paper, published in the same work for November 1866, p. 671, he places it as a synonym or subspecies of what he calls Otaria falklandica, which is my Arctocephalus nigrescens, and not the Otaria falklandica of Shaw nor the O. falklandica of Burmeister as Dr. Peters supposes, as I have shown above. In this paper he removes Otaria falklandica (that is, nigrescens) from the subgenus Phocarctos, to which he referred it in his first paper, and places it in his subgenus Arctophoca.
1. Arctophoca Philippii. Chilian Fur-Seal.
Otaria (Arctophoca) Philippii, Peters, Monatsbericht, May 1866, p. 276, t. 2 (skull), September 1866, p. 671.
Otaria Hookeri, var., Murie, P. Z. S. 1869, p. 108!
Inhab. Juan Fernandez Island (Philippi; in Mus. Berl.).
Above black-grey, more greyish yellow on the head and neck, brownish black beneath; the base of the limbs of a rusty brown, shining; lips and lower jaw principally rusty brown; hair of beard in six rows, partly black, partly quite white, partly black with white base. The outbristling (prominent bristly) pointed hairs are rusty brown at the base, black at the end, on the back mostly with very short rusty-yellowish points, and on the head and neck with somewhat longer ones. On the sides of the belly the ends of the coarser pointed hairs are either uniformly brownish black, or are very short rusty-red ones. The thick under-hair is rusty red. The hairs on the upper surface of the neck are 22 millims. long; those on the middle of the back 18, and those on the middle of the belly 11 to 12. The dense short hair on the back of the hand extends only to the middle of the same, not extending to the ends of the fingers, the ends of which are furnished with very small nails. In like manner, the very similar hair on the back of the foot does not extend to the last “Phalangen?” of the middle toe. The nail of the large outer toe is small, flat, and cut off short outside; that of the fifth inner toe is a little larger and cut off abruptly on the inner side. The very developed long nails of the three centre toes are of the form of keeled tegulæ, and remote along their whole length by the emarginations of the skin of the foot. The skin-flaps of the foot are equally long; and usually those of the centre toes are much smaller than the side ones, of which the outside one (the great toe) is the broadest. The scrotum, under the anus, is bare.—Peters, l. c. p. 277.
I have not seen this skull; but I believe the alteration Dr. Peters made in his second paper is a mistake. The figure of the skull of his Otaria Philippii has no resemblance to the skull of my O. nigrescens. It is more nearly allied to the skull of O. Stelleri from California, agreeing with it in having a vacant space with a pit in the bone between the fourth and fifth upper grinders on each side, looking as if a grinder had fallen out and the cavity had been filled up. The subgenus Arctophoca of Dr. Peters’s first essay, not as modified in his second one to contain O. falklandica (nigrescens), chiefly differs from Gill’s genus Eumetopias (which was formed on my description and figure of the skull of O. Stelleri or californiana) in the fifth upper grinder not being so far back, but in a line with the back edge of the orbital process of the zygomatic arch instead of far behind it, as it is in Eumetopias.
Dr. Murie, most curiously, considers the skull described by Dr. Peters to be the same as I have described as O. Hookeri (P. Z. S. 1869, p. 108).
Dr. Burmeister considered it O. falklandica of Shaw; and Mr. Allen (Bull. Mus. Comp. Zool. vol. ii. p. 13) agrees in this opinion; but further on (p. 15) he observes that both Dr. Gray and Dr. Murie have “evidently overlooked the fact that Dr. Peters expressly states that O. Philippii has a thick under-fur, whereas both the O. Stelleri and the O. Hookeri are true hair Seals.” But, in fact, this statement is a mistake as regards me; I never said that O. Philippii was the same as O. Stelleri, but only that its skull was most nearly allied to it, which I still maintain.