THE SIRENS OF THE SEA. 627 



Plantes in Paris. The slow way in which the animals rose to the sur- 

 face, the motionless poise of the almost sunken body, the nostrils often 

 just appearing at the surface, were very much alike in both animals. 

 The stomach cf the manatee resembles that of the hippopotamus in an 

 atrophied condition ; the sexual vesicles are found in both the hippo- 

 potamus and the manatee ; the placenta of the hippopotamus offers 

 points of resemblance with that of the dugong ; and the brain of the 

 hippopotamus, besides its typical relations to those of the pachyderms 

 and ruminants, has also affinities with that of the manatee. " Be- 

 ginning with the pig, we pass by an easy transition to the peccary, 

 which leads to the hippopotamus, and thence, in diverging lines, to the 

 ruminantia on the one hand and the manatee on the other. Paleon- 

 tologists have not discovered a form which bridges over the gap be- 

 tween the hippopotamus and the manatee, but it will be remembered 

 that certain fossil bones, considered by Cuvier to have belonged to an 

 extinct species of hippopotamus (H. medius), are regarded by Gervais 

 as the remains of the Halitherium fossili, an extinct sirenian, of which 

 order the manatee is a living representative. ... I do not mean to 

 imply that the manatee has necessarily descended direct from the hip- 

 popotamus, though extinct intermediate forms may in the future show 

 this to be so, for possibly they may be the descendants of a common 

 ancestor. ... It seems to me, however, that the only explanation of 

 the structure of the living forms, and of the petrified remains of the 

 animals referred to in these observations, is the hypothesis of there 

 being some generic connection between them." Some writers have 

 regarded the dugong as the behemoth of the Scriptures, which ate 

 grass like the ox, and whose bones were as bars of iron, although the 

 identity is more frequently ascribed to the hippopotamus. Since they 

 are both so much alike, either animal will do. "It is true," says our 

 English writer, " that the dugong does graze on submarine pastures, 

 and that his bones ring as hard as steel when struck ; but the refer- 

 ence might be held to apply equally well to the Halicore tabernaculi 

 of the Red Sea, which bears a rough resemblance to its Australian 

 relative." 



Rtippel has suggested that the curtain with which the Israelites 

 were ordered to veil the tabernacle was made of the skin of the du- 

 gong ; but it is hard to imagine how a hide an inch thick could be 

 adapted to such a purpose. 



Another member of the family of the sirenians (Rhytina stelleri) 

 was found by the Russians in Behring Strait in 1771. The mariners 

 of Beh ring's second expedition, who wei*e shipwrecked there, lived 

 principally off its flesh for nearly a year. It is said that the animal 

 was so hotly pursued afterward by hunters that it was exterminated 

 in seventeen years, and no specimen has been seen since. Baron Nor- 

 denskiold, however, in his " Voyage of the Vega," adduces evidence 

 to prove that a specimen of this animal was seen twenty-seven years 



