550, THE RYTINA. 
The skull of these animals is very singularly formed, the upper jaw being bent downward 
over the lower jaw, and terminated by two large incisor teeth. It is supposed that the 
object of this structure is to assist the animal in gathering together and dragging up by 
the roots the alge and other subaqueous vegetation on which it feeds, 
The skin of the Dugong is capable of being manufactured into various useful articles, 
and the flesh is in some repute, being said to bear close resemblance to veal. 
A THIRD genus of these herbivorous cetaceans is the Rytina, which is supposed to be 
now extinct, the last known specimen having been killed in 1768, only twenty-seven 
years after the creatures were discovered. 
The Rytina possessed no true teeth, and masticated its food by means of two bony 
plates, one of which was attached to the front of the palate, and the other to the lower 
jaw. It was a large animal, measuring about twenty-five feet in length, and nearly 
twenty feet in circumference. The Rytina was discovered in the year 1741 on an island 
in Behring’s Straits; and as the animals were large, heavy, and unarmed, they were 
most valuable in affording food to the unfortunate sailors who were shipwrecked upon 
that island, and were forced to abide there for the space of ten months. When the 
islands were visited by ships in search of sea-otters, which abounded in that locality, the 
crews found the Rytinas to be so valuable and so easy a prey that the entire race was 
extirpated in a few years. 
The only account.of the Rytina is that which was furnished by Steller, one of the 
shipwrecked party, who, undaunted by the terrible privations which he was forced to 
undergo, wrote an admirable description of the animal, which was afterwards published 
in St. Petersburg, 
