Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 15.djvu/480

Rh 456 M A N M A N The outlying Manassites had many struggles with their foreign neighbours ; 1 Chron. ii. 23 speaks of the loss of sixty cities to Geshur and the Aramaeans (A. V. mistrans lates). After suffering much at the hands of Damascus, they were carried into captivity by Tiglath Pileser (734 B.C.). The captivity of their brethren in the west followed some thirteen years later. The name Manasseli (H&f 3D, he who causes to forget) is referred in Gen. xli. 51 to Joseph s joy at the birth of the son who caused him to forget his sorrows and cease to long for his home. Unlike the other tribal names, it occurs as a personal name before the captivity, being that borne by the sou and successor of Hezekiah, the godless king whose sins are designated as the decisive cause of the rejection of the kingdom of Judah. MANATEE, an animal belonging to the order Sirenia, for the general characters and position of which see MAMMALIA (p. 389). The name Manati was appar ently first applied to it by the early Spanish colonists of the West Indies, in allusion to the hand-like use which it frequently makes of its fore limbs ; by English writers from the time of Dampier (who gives a good account of its habits) downwards it has been generally spelt &quot;Manatee.&quot; It was placed by Linnaeus in his hetero geneous genus Trichechus, but Storr s name Manatus is now generally accepted for it by zoologists. The question of the specific distinction of the African and American Manatees will be treated of further on, but it will be chiefly to the latter and better known form that the following description applies. The size of the Manatee has been much exaggerated, as there is no trustworthy evidence of its attaining a greater length than 8 or perhaps 9 feet. Its general external form may be seen in the figure at p. 390 of the present volume, taken from a living example in the Brighton Aquarium. The body is somewhat fish-like, but depressed and ending posteriorly in a broad flat shovel-like horizontal tail, with rounded edges. The head is of moderate size, oblong, with a blunt, truncated muzzle, and divided from the body by a very slight constriction or neck. The fore limbs are flattened oval paddles, placed rather low on the sides of the body, and showing externally no signs of division into fingers, but with a tolerably free motion at FIG. 1. Front View of Head of American Manatee, showing the eyes, nostrils, and mouth. A, with the lobes of the upper lip divaricated ; B, with the lip contracted. From Murie, Trans. Zool. Soc., vol. xi. the shoulder, elbow, and wrist joints, and with three diminutive flat nails near their extremities. No traces of hind limbs are discernible either externally 01 internally ; and there is no dorsal fin. The mouth is very peculiar, the tumid upper lip being cleft in the middle line into two lobes, each of which is separately movable, as will be described in speaking of its manner of feeding. The nostrils are two semilunar valve-like slits, at the apex of the muzzle. The eyes are very minute, placed at the sides of the head, and with a nearly circular aperture with wrinkled margins. The external ear is a minute orifice situated behind the eye, without any trace of pinna. The skin generally is of a dark greyish colour, not smooth or glistening, like that of the Cetacea, but finely wrinkled. At a little distance it appears naked, but a close inspection, at all events in 3 T oung animals, shows a scanty covering of very delicate hairs, and both upper and under lips are well supplied with short, stiff bristles. The skeleton is remarkable for the massiveness and extreme density of most of the bones of which it is com posed, especially the skull and ribs, The cervical region of the vertebral column is short, and presents the great peculiarity of containing only six bones instead of seven, the number usual in the Mammalia, the only other case being that of one species of Sloth (Choloepus hoffmanni}. Another great peculiarity (which, however, seems to be characteristic of all the Sirenia) is that the flat ends of the bodies of the vertebrae do not ossify separately, so as to form disk-like epiphyses in the young state. None of the vertebras are united together to form a sacrum, the rudimentary pelvic bones having no direct connexion with the vertebral column. The number of rib-bearing vertebrae appears to vary in different individuals from fifteen to eighteen, and those of the lumbar and caudal region from twenty-five to twenty-nine. The skull (fig. 2) is exceed- Fio. 2. Skull of African Manatee (Manalus sencgcdensis). x 4-. From Mus. Roy. Coll. Surgeons. ingly different from that of any of the Whales or Dolphins (order Cetacea), with which the Manatee was formerly supposed to be allied. The cerebral cavity is rather small as compared with the size of the animal, and of oblong form; its roof is formed of the parietal bones as in ordinary mammals. The squamosal has an extremely large and massive zygomatic process, which joins the largely de veloped malar bone in front. The orbit is small, but prominent and nearly surrounded by bone. The anterior nares taken together form a lozenge-shaped aperture, which looks upwards and extends backwards considerably behind the orbits. Their sides are formed by the ascending pro cesses of the premaxilke below, and by the supraorbital processes of the frontals above, no traces of nasals being found in most skulls, though these bones are occasionally present in a most rudimentary condition, attached to the edges of the frontals, far away from the middle line, a position quite unique among the mammalia. In front of the uarial aperture the face is prolonged into a narrow rostrum, formed by the premaxillse, supported below and at the sides by the maxilke. The under surface of this is very rugous, and in life covered by a horny plate. The rami of the mandible are firmly united together at the symphysis, which is compressed laterally, deflected, and has a rugous upper surface ; to this another horny plate is attached, which with that of the upper jaw function ally supplies the place of teeth in the anterior part of the mouth. In the young state there are rudimentary teeth concealed beneath these horny plates, which never penetrate through them, and must therefore be quite