UPPER LIP OF MANATEE CHAP. 
(After de Blainville. ) 
Halicore australis. 
Fie, 179.—Skeleton of Dugong. 
may get still more numerous. 
This large number of grinding 
teeth is obviously suggestive of 
the Whales, with which the 
Sirenia are believed by some to 
be allied. It is at least a re- 
markable coincidence that these 
two aquatic groups of mammals 
should both have assumed the 
same indefinite tooth formula. 
It is correct to say assumed, since 
extinct forms of Manatees, such 
as Halitherium and Prorastoma, 
have not a continuous succession 
of molars. The brain of the 
Manatee is, contrary to the 
usual arrangement among aqua- 
tic mammals, smooth, and only 
marked by one or two fissures. 
The Manatee’ is black in 
colour, its thick skin being 
wrinkled. The animal is assisted 
in feeding by a curious mechan- 
ism of the upper lip; this is split 
in two, and the two halves, which 
are furnished with strong bristles, 
can play upon each other like 
the points of a pair of forceps. 
The flippers are furnished with 
nails, save in JZ. inwnguis, but in 
the nailed forms it is not every 
finger which is thus armed. 
Halicore? the Dugong, is an 
entirely Oriental and Australian 
1 Beddard, ‘‘ Notes upon the Anatomy 
of a Manatee (Manatus inunguis),” Proc. 
Zool. Soc. 1897, p. 47. 
2 See Kiikenthal in Semon’s ‘‘ Zoolog. 
Forschungen,” Denkschr. Jen. 1897 ; 
Langkavel, ‘‘ Der Dugong,”’ Zool. Garten,, 
1896, p. 337. 
