134 NATURAL HISTORY OF AQUATIC ANIMALS. 



" The Rhytina is infested with a peculiar insect, like a louse, which is wont to occupy and 

 inhabit in large numbers especially the wrinkled limbs, breasts, nipples, pudendum, anus, and the 

 rough cavities of the skin, and which bore through the cuticula and cutis. From the extra vasa ted 

 lymphatic fluid conspicuous warts arise everywhere; the gulls (Lari) are also allured to hunt with 

 their sharp beaks these insects (clinging to the backs of these animals), a pleasant food, and more- 

 over the birds perform a friendly and grateful office for the animals troubled by these parasites."' 



ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS. This narrative, as I have already stated, contains all that we 

 know of the natural history of the Arctic Sea-cow, and, I venture to say, all that we shall ever 

 know from visual observation. There are a number of facts, however, bearing upon the mode of 

 capture, geographical distribution, and the history of the extinction of this animal which have 

 been the theme of writers after Steller. Dr. Brandt, a celebrated naturalist of St. Petersburg, and 

 the Danish explorer Nordenskiold, have taken pains to bring together all that is known on these 

 topics up to the present time. Most of the books and manuscripts from which they have gathered 

 their information being inaccessible to me, I must content myself with summing up the results of 

 their investigations. 



THE EXTINCTION OF RHYTINA. The extinction of the Rhytina followed close upon its 

 discovery. If we may accept the results of Nordenskiold's investigations upon this point, the 

 animal was last seen in 1854, or a little more than a century after its discovery. Long before this, 

 at all events, it had become so diminished in numbers as not to furnish any considerable food 

 supply. 



It appears that the existence of the Sea-cow on Bering Island had no sooner been made 

 known in Russia than the vessels engaged in the fur trade in Bering's Sea began to make a 

 practice of wintering on the island, in order to take in a supply of the flesh of the animal for 

 food. That this custom became general in a few years, appears from Scherer's narrative of the first 

 Russian hunting expeditions to the Aleutian Islands. "Ivan Krasselnikoff's vessel," he writes, 

 "started first in 1754, and arrived on the 8th October at Bering Island, where all the vessels 

 fitted out for hunting the sea-otter on the remote islands are wont to pass the winter, in order to 

 provide themselves with a sufficient stock of the flesh of the Sea-cow." 2 



The next year, 1755, the engineer Jakovlev, who visited Bering Island and the adjacent 

 Copper Island, in search of copper, recorded in his journal the mode of capturing Rhytina, which 

 differs in no way from the method employed by Steller and his companions. Jakovlev, however, 

 was so impressed with the rapidity with which the Sea-cow was disappearing from the islands 

 that he petitioned the Kamtchatkan authorities that its capture might be restricted. It appears 

 that at the time of his visit the Rhytina had been driven away from Copper Island. 3 



Scherer informs us of the lauding of three other hunting expeditious at Bering Island, 

 between 1757 and 1762, for the purpose of capturing Sea-cows, implying at the same time, as in 

 the instance already quoted from him, that such was the custom of all expeditions sent thither. 

 His allusions to the subject are as follows: "The autumn storms, or rather the wish to take on 

 board a stock of provisions, compelled them (a number of hunters sent out by the merchant 

 Tolstyk under command of the Cossack Obeuchov) to touch at Commander's Island (Bering 

 Island), where, during the winter up to the 24th (13th) June, 1757, they obtained nothing else 

 than sea-cows, sea-lions, and large seals." 



'Specimens of this crustacean were found in a small piece of Rhytina skin discovered in the British Museum. 



"SCHERER: Neue Nachriohtru von denen ueuentdecktrii Insiiln in der See zwischen Asien nud Ame.rika, 1776, 

 p. 38, fide Nordenskiold. 



3 Jakovlev's diary was published in Russian in 1867, by Pekavski, and translated into Latin and republished in 

 1868 by Brandt. See BRANDT: Symbolic Sirenologic;e, fasc. iii, pp. '295, 29G. 



