40 SEA FABLES EXPLAINED. 



keeper's movements, and start in the direction to which he 

 is apparently about to throw a fish, even before the latter 

 has left his hand. This may be seen at the Zoological 

 Gardens, Regent's Park, and, better than anywhere else in 

 Europe, at the Jardin d'Acclimatation, Paris. It would be 

 quite in accordance with their habits that one of these 

 Otaria should dive under a ship, and rise above the surface 

 on either side, eagerly surveying those on board, in hope of 

 obtaining food, or from mere curiosity. 



The seals and their movements account for so many 

 mermaid stories, that all accounts of sea-women with 

 prominent bosoms were ridiculed and discredited until 

 competent observers recognised in the form and habits of 

 certain aquatic animals met with in the bays and estuaries 

 of the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, the west coast of Africa, 

 and sub-tropical America, the originals of these "travellers' 

 tales." These were — first, the manatee, which is found in 

 the West Indian Islands, Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, and 

 Brazil, and in Africa in the River Congo, Senegambia, and 

 the Mozambique Channel ; second, the diigong, or halicoj-ey 

 which ranges along the east coast of Africa, Southern Asia, 

 the Bornean Archipelago, and Australia ; and, third, the 

 rytina, seen on Behring's Island in the Kamschatkan Sea 

 by Steller, the Russian zoologist and voyager, in 1741, and 

 which is supposed to have become extinct within twenty- 

 seven years after its discovery, by its having been recklessly 

 and indiscriminately slaughtered.* Then science, in the 

 person of Illeger, made the amende honorable, and frankly 



* Almost all that is known of the living rytina is from an account 

 published in 175 1, in St. Petersburg, by Steller, who was one of an ex- 

 ploring party wrecked on Behring's Island in 1741. During the ten 

 months the crew remained on the island they pursued this easily-cap- 

 tured animal so persistently, for food, that it was all but annihilated at 

 the lime. The last one there was killed in 1768. 



