626 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



The oil, which is extensively manufactured at Moreton Bay, pos- 

 sesses all the medicinal qualities of cod-liver oil without its unpleasant 

 taste. In its pure state it can be taken without disagreeing with the 

 most sensitive stomach. " I have myself," says our English writer, 

 " used it instead of butter with toast ; have eaten delicate pastry made 

 from dugong-lard ; have fried fish with it ; and, as a consequence, 

 have never since ceased to wonder that some better effort is not 

 attempted to make it more widely known. Consumption, the scourge 

 of the old country, finds an unfriendly atmosphere in Queensland, where 

 I have known consumptives, landing with the disease to all appearance 

 hopelessly advanced, become in a few years healthy if not robust, yet, 

 even there, the most marvelous effects are attributed to dugong-oil 

 in cases of rheumatism, and wasting as well as ordinary consumption. 

 ... I have known ladies, who shuddered at the bare notion of swal- 

 lowing oil, derive benefits from its adaptation to all manner of culi- 

 nary purposes." 



Dr. Hobbs, of Brisbane, who first introduced the oil, received a 

 medal at the Paris Exhibition of 1855 for his product. The manu- 

 facture afterward fell into other hands, and the short-sighted mana- 

 gers, rather than admit that the supply could not be equal to the de- 

 mand, adulterated the pure product with unsavory shark-oil. Then 

 they were astonished and indignant that they received no more orders 

 from the old country. 



Because the sirenians live in the sea, the first inclination of natu- 

 ralists, before they had become fully acquainted with the family, was 

 to classify them with the whales. A better knowledge of them has 

 proved that this arrangement, unless it is safely qualified, is mislead- 

 ing. Professor Owen says on this subject : " The whole of the inter- 

 nal structure in the herbivorous cetacea differs as widely from that of 

 the carnivorous cetacea as do their habits ; the amount of variation is 

 as great as well could be in animals of the same class existing in the 

 same great deep. The junction of the dugongs and manatees with 

 the true whales can not, therefore, be admitted in a distribution of 

 animals according to their organization. With much superficial resem- 

 blance, they have little real organic resemblance to the walrus, which 

 exhibits an extreme modification of the amphibious carnivorous type. 

 I conclude, therefore, that the dugong and its congeners must either 

 form a group apart or be joined with the pachyderms, with which 

 the herbivorous cetacea have most affinity." 



Professor H. C. Chapman, of Philadelphia, who has dissected a male 

 and a female hippopotamus, has discovered several analogies in struct- 

 ure between the manatee and that animal. He remarks that in observ- 

 ing the manatee that lived for several months in the Philadelphia 

 Zoological Garden, the manner in which it rose to the surface of the 

 water to breathe reminded him often of the hippopotami that he had 

 watched in the Zoological Garden of London and the Jardin des 



