56 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



danihein, signifying illustrious, generous, noble ; or 

 rather, Damn, for Danani, or Danita, the inhabitants 

 of the city of Dan, at the foot of Mount Lebanus, 

 the spot where the Phoenicians worshipped the 

 graven image given them by Micah (!), and where 

 Jeroboam had erected the golden calf." 



As for the long residence of these Dannans in 

 Greece before they came to Ireland, Latham's 

 " Ethnology of Europe," p. 137, has the following : — 

 " I think that the eponymus of the Argive Danai 

 was no other than that of the Israelite tribe of 

 Dan ; only we are so used to confine ourselves to 

 the soil of Palestine in our consideration of the 

 history of tlie Israelites, that we treat them as if 

 they were adscripti glebee, and ignore the share they 

 may have taken in the ordinary history of the 

 world. The seaports between Tyre and Ascalon, of 

 Dau, Ephraim, and Ashur, must have followed the 

 history of seaports in general, and not have stood 

 on the coast for nothing. What a light would be 

 thrown on the origin of the name Pelop-o-nesus 

 and the history of the Pelop-id family, if a bond 

 %de nation of Pelopes, with unequivocal affiuities 

 and contemporary annals, had existed on the coast 

 of Asia ! "VVho would have hesitated to connect the 

 two? Yet with the Danai and the tribe of Dan 

 this is the case, and no one connects them." 



There is strong evidence, however, of Jewish 

 colonies in Spain from a very early date. In Margoli- 

 onth's " Lectures," p. 24, 1 find, among many others, 

 records of two very ancient Hebrew inscriptions, 

 which had existed at Saguntum. One ran— 



"This is the grave of Adoniram, the servant of king 



Solomon, who came to collect the tribute and died 



on the day " 



and another records the death of a prince of the 

 army of Amaziah, king of Judah : — 



" Raise, with a bitter voice, a lamentation for the great 

 prince ; the Lord has taken him to Amaziah," &c. 



The voyage from Spain to Britain, and therefore, 

 of course, to Ireland, was very trifling. Appian 

 tells us that, from Spain to Britain was only half a 

 day. 



" Quando in Britanniam, una cum ssetu maris transve- 

 huutur qirne quidem trajectio dimidiati diei est."* 



But to revert to the Phoenicians. Although much 

 of their worship was gross in the extreme, as indeed 

 was the idolatry into which the Israelites frequently 

 fell away, I find that " in their (the Phoenicians') 

 oldest temples were no images. But there were 

 rude fetishes, conical or oblong stones. . . . Such a 

 stone was called by the Greeks baitulos, and Bochart 

 and others of a former age traced these to Bethel 

 and to the pillar which Jacob erected there." 



* "This must be a mistake for a day and a half, unless, 

 under the name of Spain, the ancients sometimes compre- 

 hended a large portion of the coast of France as far as 

 Cape Ushant." 



Thus, then, whether Ireland was colonized par- 

 tially by Israelites or solely by Phoenicians, there 

 seems to have been a sufficient intimacy between 

 the races to account for any resemblance which may 

 be held to exist between the ancient Irish churches 

 and the Ark of the Covenant. Col. G. 



ON THE SIREN I A. 

 By Thomas Southwell, F.Z.S. 



Honorary Secretary to the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists' 

 Society. 



THOSE who had the good fortune to visit the 

 Gardens of the Zoological Society of 

 London between the 6th uf August and the 7th 

 of September last, could not fail to be interested 

 in an animal then exhibited for the first time 

 alive in this country. I need hardly say, I refer 

 to that strange animal the Manatee. So curious 

 and interesting is the group to which this creature 

 belongs, and so rapidly is it disappearing before the 

 advance of civilization, that some account of its 

 existing members will perhaps be acceptable to the 

 readers of Science-Gossip ; and I have been induced 

 to add a brief summary of what is known of one 

 other individual belonging to the same family,— 

 Steller's Manatee, which has become extinct almost 

 within the memory of man. 



Once numerous on the face of the globe, as shown 



by the fossil remains of various genera and species 



found in the later Tertiary formations, the order 



Sirenia is now represented by two genera only, 



Manatus and Halicore ; it was formerly regarded 



by naturalists as forming part of the order Cetacea, 



which they divided into two sections, one comprising 



the true Whales and Dolphins, termed Zoophagous,QX 



animal-eating, the other, which included the Manatee 



and its kindred, they designated Phytophagous or 



plant-eating Cetaceans. A better acquaintance with 



the anatomy of the members of the group has 



proved that the resemblance to the Cetacea is 



almost entirely confined to external appearances, 



and that their organization indicates a close 



alliance to the great order Ungnlata, or hoofed 



quadrupeds ; but at the same time it is so peculiar 



as to constitute a small, but very distinct group, to 



which, from a fancied resemblance of its members 



to the fabulous Siren, or Mermaid, the name 



Sirenia has been given. The claim of any recent 



member of this order to a place in the British 



Eauna is very slight indeed, and rests entirely upon 



the occurrence of one or two specimens of the West 



Indian Manatee {Manatus americanus), which have 



been cast ashore, in a putrid condition, on the 



Orkney and Shetland islands, probably borne 



northward, after death, by the gulf-stream. 



The existing members of this order are com- 

 prised in one family, the Manatida, which is 



