316 



THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



word usually translated "badger," really 

 meaning some kind of a sea beast, a 

 fact — or belief — embodied in its scien- 

 tific name Halicorc iahernaculi. 



An incidental point of interest aliout 

 one of the sea cows found in the rivers 

 of northern South America is that its 

 flesh might be eaten on fast days, as it 

 was considered by the Catholic Fathers 

 to be a fish. This lack of zoological 

 knowledge is hardly to be wondered at; 

 we are all apt to judge by appearances, 

 and (with apologies to Pliny and Aris- 

 totle) systematic zoology was an un- 



tropical waters, dwelling in the icy seas 

 around the bleak shores of a barren 

 island; another illustration, like that 

 of the mammoth, of the danger of con- 

 cluding, because a group of creatures 

 is now found in warm regions, that all 

 of its kind have lived there. 



When Bering, in 1741, discovered the 

 island now bearing his name, he hap- 

 pened upon one of the abiding places of 

 the fur seal and also discovered the 

 rytina. It was made known to the 

 reading world by Kipling in his story 

 of Kotik the White Seal, which is as 



Dugong, or sea cow of the African coast aud Red Sea. Its skin is smooth and leathery, unlike that of the rytina 

 or manatee, and it has two tusks deeply imbedded in the skull. The bones of all sea cows are extremely dense, 

 their weight serving the purpose of the ballast tanks of a subm:irine, eucibliag the animal to browse readily on 

 aquatic |>lants. The skeleton is lightest in the seagoing dugoag, but even in this species the bones are heavy com- 

 pared with those of land animals. [From photograph of dugong model, seven feet in length, in the American 

 Museum] 



known science in the days when the code 

 was drawn up, and even today we are 

 called upon to tell the position of the bat 

 and explain why a porpoise is not a fish. 

 Perhaps the most interesting as well as 

 the largest member of the sea cow family, 

 is the great Arctic sea cow, or rytina, 

 once found about Bering and Copper 

 islands off the coast of Kamtchatka. 

 This species is the least known — be- 

 cause it was long ago " eaten off the face 

 of the earth by gluttonous man." 

 Strange it is to find the largest members 

 of a family whose natural home is in 



good as a story as it is poor as natural 

 history. There is this compensation 

 however — - had it been truer to nature, 

 David Starr Jordan would not have 

 written Matka and Kotik} 



At the time Bering discovered the 

 Arctic sea cow, Alaska was the source 

 of a most important fur trade, due largely 

 to the then abundance of the valuable 

 sea otter, and thither sailed the Russians 

 from Petropavlosk. Provisioning the 



' Matke and Kotik. — - A Story of the Mist Islands. 

 A charming tale written by Dr. Jordan in order to 

 show that it is possible to combine accurate natural 

 history with literature. 



