THE NORTHERN SEA-COW 1 65 



fo7'e feet : it blew through the mouth, was brown 

 with lighter spots, and had no back Jin. This can 

 scarcely have been anything else than a rhytina in 

 poor condition, probably from short commons — a 

 veritable Nestor of its race, connecting the nine- 

 teenth century with the dim days of Behring and 

 Steller — the last of the sea-cows ! 



Further study of the vanished rhytina resolves 

 itself into an academical survey of its remains. 

 These have been discovered in considerable quantity 

 by probing with iron rods or bayonets in the grass- 

 covered gravel of the Commander Islands, just as at 

 the seaside one bores the sand for cockles. The bones 

 are found at a depth of from thirty to fifty cm. below 

 the surface ; many nearly perfect skeletons have been 

 obtained. In 1831, the only specimen of the sea- 

 cow in any European museum was a horny lamina 

 from the palate, which lay dusty and unnoticed in the 

 museum of the St. Petersburg Academy till recog- 

 nised and described by Brandt. Vosnesski, who 

 visited Behring Island in 1844 by order of the 

 St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, obtained 

 some rib bones and fragmentary skulls lacking the 

 lower jaw : on September 6, 1861, a report was 

 presented to the Academy on a complete skull and 

 some bones also obtained by him, together with a 

 nearly perfect skeleton which had been sent by the 

 Russian-American Merchants' Company. In 1863 

 Nordmann described and figured the rhytina 



