GREAT IRISH DEER—STELLER’S SEA-COW. 247 
beneath the surface on aquatic plants, as the terrestrial herbivorous 
mammals feed upon the green pastures on land. 
Not a few of the tales of mermen and mermaids owe their 
origin to these creatures, as well as to seals, and even walruses. 
The Portuguese and Spaniards give the Manatee a name signifying 
**Woman-fish,” and the Dutch call the Dugong the “Little 
Bearded Man.” A very little imagination, and a memory only 
for the marvellous, doubtless sufficed to complete the meta- 
morphosis of the half-woman, or man, half-fish, into a siren, a 
mermaid, ora merman. Hence the general name Sirenia. 
The Manatee (J/anatus) inhabits the west coast and rivers of 
tropical Africa, and the east coast and rivers of tropical America, 
the West Indies, and Florida. 
The Dugong (Haticore) extends along the Red Sea coasts, the 
shores of India, and the adjacent islands, and goes as far as the 
northern and eastern coasts of Australia. 
The most remarkable Sirenian is the Rhytina gigas, or 
*<Steller’s Sea-Cow.” Early in 1885 the trustees of the British 
Museum acquired a nearly complete skeleton of this animal, now 
extinct, from peat deposits in Behring’s Island, of Pleistocene 
Fic. 58.—Skeleton of Rhytina gigas (Steller’s ‘‘Sea-Cow”), from a peat 
deposit, Behring’s Island. 
age. Formerly it was abundant along the shores of Kamtchatka, 
the Kurile Islands, and Alaska. It was first discovered by the 
German naturalist, Steller, who, in company with Vitus Behring, 
a captain in the Russian Navy and a celebrated navigator of the 
northern seas, was with his vessel and crew cast away upon 
Behring’s Island (where Behring died) in 1741. Steller’s original 
