THE MANATEE 



THE SIRENIA OR MANATEES AND DUGONGS 

 The dugongs and manatees are the only mammals, save 

 the cetacea, which possess paddles instead of ambulatory 

 fore limbs, and in which the hind limbs have disappeared 

 that is to say which possess this combination of 

 characters, for the seals and sea lions may be fairly 

 said to move by paddles. They can be readily dis- 

 tinguished from the whales and dolphins by their 

 much less markedly fishlike aspect ; the skeleton 

 and anatomy generally is indicative of a beast which 

 has more recently taken to the purely aquatic life than 

 have the whales. Dr. Semon truly remarked of the 

 dugong, that it appeared to the eye " more fishlike 

 than seals, and more mammal-like than whales." The 

 hairy covering of the body has entirely disappeared 

 in whales save for a few hairs upon the snout in some 

 cases. In the Sirenia, though the body is practically 

 naked, there are yet traces here and there over the 

 general body surface of hairs. Besides the manatee and 

 the dugong there was, until the close of the eighteenth 

 century, a huge thirty foot long sirenian known as 

 Rhytina upon the shores of Behring's straits. 



THE MANATEE 



The fact that on the rare occasions when a manatee 

 is exhibited in the gardens it is accommodated in the 

 reptile house is no slur upon its Zoological position, 

 but only due to the necessity of providing for a tropical 

 animal a tropical temperature. The manatee, aquatic 

 and " finned " though it is, is a mammal, and belongs 

 to an order which has been called with unnecessary 

 poetry the Sirenia. The name embodies, however, 

 the legend that these creatures are responsible for the 

 origin of the Sirens. The manatee and still more 

 its Eastern ally the dugong though by no means 

 " mulier formosa superne," undoubtedly " desinit in 



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