100 ANIMAL SKETCHES. CHAP. 



manatee of the Atlantic of which this living mermaid at 

 the Zoo is a young example, about a year old and three 

 feet seven long and the dugong of the Indian Ocean 

 have a way of raising themselves head and shoulders out 

 of the water. The mother is said moreover to hold the 

 young to her breast with those curious mobile flipper arms. 

 These were the facts observed. A warm imagination did 

 the rest. 



The mermaid having thus fallen from her high estate 

 there only remains to make the best of her as she really 

 is. She may not be so beautiful as she has been painted 

 (a fact not altogether unprecedented), but she is not without 

 a certain special interest of her own. 



At first sight you might think that the manatee was an 

 undersized whale ; and the anatomist Cuvier thought so 

 too. He divided the \vhales into two families. The 

 manatee and its allies he called herbivorous whales : the 

 rest he described as ordinary whales or blowers. But there 

 are so many important points of difference between 

 the sirens and the true whales, that zoologists are now 

 agreed in placing the former in a group by themselves. 

 The general similarity of external form is probably due to 

 their both leading an aquatic life under somewhat similar 

 conditions. 



You will notice that the nostrils of the manatee each 

 shaped like a crescent moon with the horns of the crescent 

 upwards are placed near the upper margin of the swollen 

 muzzle, and that they are some little distance apart. They 

 can be kept closed while the animal is under water, but 

 open when it rises to the surface every two or three 

 minutes to breathe. The nostrils of the whales are in a 

 different and very peculiar position. They are on the top of 

 the head, and are very often united into a common spiracle. 

 The whale can stay under water a long while, much longer 



