Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/260

248 wholesale slaughter by man, in 1768, just twenty-seven years after it was first discovered by the voyager Behring on a small island lying off the Kamtchatkan coast. The Rhytina was a great unwieldy animal of some twenty-seven feet in length, and about twenty feet in circumference. It fell a ready prey to Behring and his crew, who were located on the island for several months; the work of extermination being duly completed by subsequent voyagers who visited the island. The manatees are no strangers to London, since in 1875 one of these animals was to be seen disporting itself in the seal-tank in the gardens of the Zoölogical Society at Regent's Park. This specimen, a female of immature age, was brought from the Demerara coast, and was the first living specimen which had been brought to England, although attempts had been made in 1866 to procure these animals for the gardens at Regent's Park, one specimen, indeed, dying just before reaching Southampton. A member of the Manatee group, obtained from Trinidad, was recently exhibited in London, and the public, interested in the curious in zoölogy, were thus enabled to interview a living member of the Siren group, while comparative anatomists, in their turn, have been afforded a rich treat from the fate which awaits rare and common specimens having, as we write, overtaken the illustrious visitor in question.

The manatees and dugongs possess bodies which, as regards their shape, may be described each as a great barrel "long drawn out." No hinder limbs are developed, this latter peculiarity distinguishing them from the seals, and relating them to the whales. The hide is very tough, sparsely covered with hair, and most nearly resembles that of the hippopotamus. The "flippers," or paddle-like limbs, are placed far forward on the body, and on the edge of the paddle rudimentary nails are developed; while concealed beneath the skin of the paddle we find the complete skeleton of an arm or fore-limb. The tail is broad, horizontally flattened, like that of the whales, and forms an effective propeller. These animals are vegetable feeders, the Zoölogical Society's specimen having exhibited a strong partiality for lettuce and vegetable-marrow. In a state of nature the sea-cows crop the marine vegetation which fringes their native shores. The remaining outward features of interest in these creatures may be summed up by saying that no back fins are developed; that the eyes are very small and inconspicuous; and that, although the anterior nostrils are never used as "blowholes," they can be closed at will like the nostrils of the seals—a faculty of needful kind in aquatic animals. To the technical anatomist, the sea-cows present strong points of resemblance to some of the hoofed quadrupeds. The anatomical examination of these animals has shown that their peculiarities are not limited to their outward appearance and habits. It is not generally known, for example, that the neck of the vast majority of mammals consists of seven vertebræ or segments of the spine. Man thus possesses this number in