Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/259

Rh shape and aspect. Its creamy, white skin is certainly a peculiar feature; but the broad, horizontal tail-fin is well exemplified in this northern stranger, while the breathing habits of its group may also be studied superficially but satisfactorily on the specimen in question. The beluga inhabits the North American coast, at the mouths of the rivers on the Labrador and Hudson's Bay coast, while it is known to penetrate even to the Arctic regions. These whales are plentiful in the Gulf of St. Lawrence in spring and summer, and appear to migrate to the west coast of Greenland in October and November. The Esquimaux regard the beluga as their special prize, and contrive, with the aptitude for design which the necessities of savage existence teach, to utilize wellnigh every portion of its frame, even to the manufacture of a kind of animal-glass from its dried and transparent internal membranes.

But little space remains in which to treat of certain near relations and somewhat interesting allies of the whales. Such are the Manatees, or "sea-cows," and the Dugongs, collectively named Sirenia, in the category of zoölogists. The origin of this latter name is attended with some degree of interest. It has been bestowed on these animals from their habit of assuming an upright or semi-erect posture in the water; their appearance in this position, and especially when viewed from a distance by the imaginative nautical mind, having doubtless laid a foundation, in fact, for the tales of "sirens" and "mermaids" anxious to lure sailors to destruction by their amatory numbers. Any one who has watched the countenance of a seal from a short distance must have been struck with the close resemblance to the human face which the countenance of these animals presents. Such a likeness is seen even to a greater degree in the sea-cows, which also possess the habit of folding their "flippers," or swimming-paddles, across their chests, and, it is said, of holding the young to the breast in the act of nutrition by aid of the paddle-like fore-limbs. If I mistake not, Captain Sowerby mentions, in an account of his voyages, that the surgeon of the ship on one occasion came to him in a state of excitement to announce that he had seen a man swimming in the water close at hand; the supposed human being proving to be a manatee, which had been, doubtless, merely exercising a natural curiosity regarding the ship and its tenants.

These animals are near relatives of the whales, but differ from them, not merely in habits, but in bodily structure and conformation. They live an estuarine existence, rarely venturing out to sea. The manatees occur in the shallow waters and at the mouths of the great rivers of the Atlantic coasts of America and Africa. The dugongs inhabit the shores of the Indian Ocean, and are common on certain parts of the Australian coasts. There are only two living genera—the manatees and dugongs—of these animals; a third, the Rhytina Stelleri, having, like the famous Dodo, become extinct through its