42 SEA FABLES EXPLAINED. 



more nearly the terrestrial type than either the manatee, 

 the rytina, or the dugong, in which the hind limbs are 

 absent. The two last named tend more than does the 

 manatee to the marine mammals ; but there is a strong 

 likeness between these three recent forms. They all have 

 a cylindrical body, like that of a seal, but instead of hind 

 limbs there is in all a broad tail flattened horizontally ; and 

 the chief difference in their outward appearance is in the 

 shape of this organ. In the manatee it is rounded, in the 

 dugong forked like that of a whale, in the rytina crescent- 

 shaped. The tail of the Halitheriuin appears to have been 

 shaped somewhat like that of the beaver. The body of 

 the manatee is broader in proportion to its length and 

 depth than that of the dugong. In a paper read before the 

 Royal Society, July 12th, 1821, on a manatee sent to 

 London in spirits by the Duke of Manchester, then 

 Governor of Jamaica, Sir Everard Home remarked of this 

 greater lateral expansion that, as the manatee feeds on 

 plants that grow at the mouths of great rivers, and the dugong 

 upon those met with in the shallows amongst small islands 

 in the Eastern seas, the difference of form would make the 

 manatee more buoyant and better fitted to float in fresh 

 water. 



In all the Ulanatidcs the mammae of the female, which 

 are greatly distended during the period of lactation, are 

 situated very differently from those of the whales, being 

 just beneath the pectoral fins. These fins or paws are 

 much more flexible and free in their movements than 

 those of the cetae, and are sufficiently prehensile to enable 

 the animal to gather food between the palms or inner 

 surfaces of both, and the female to hold her young one 

 to her breast with one of them. Like the whales, they are 

 warm-blooded mammals, breathing by lungs, and are there- 



