C E T A C E A. 



793 



appears nearly in the middle of the head. The skin 

 is very thin, the blubber yellowish, and the flesh of a 

 much darker red than that of almost any others of 

 the order. 



Such are a few points in the outline of some of the 

 leading species of this very remarkable order of 

 animals, at least of those which are inhabitants of the 

 sea. They vary in their modes and means of feeding, 

 but they must all be considered as animal feeders ; 

 for, though the whalebone whale neither does, nor 

 can bite any animal, but lives by filtering the water 

 through the fringes of its plates of whalebone, yet 

 the substances which it procures by this filtering are 

 animal, not vegetable ; and, though that portion of 

 the sea in which it is chiefly found is technically 

 called the "green water," yet the greenness arises 

 from animal matter, not from vegetable. There still 

 remains one subdivision or group of the order which 

 are wholly or chiefly vegetable feeders. They are 

 inhabitants of the warmer parts of the world, and 

 are found in the rivers and their estuaries rather than 

 in the ocean. 



H^ERBIVOUOUS CETACEA. These differ much from 

 the carnivorous cetacea both in their appearance and 

 in their habits. Their teeth are flat on the crowns, 

 and adapted for dividing and bruising vegetable 

 substances ; and some of them often quit the rivers 

 to crawl about and graze on the banks. They have 

 hairs in the form of mustachios, and the females have 

 two pectoral mammae. Hence, as Cuvier very justly 

 remarks, they may have given occasion to the ancient 

 fables of tritons and sirens, and also to the modern 

 one of mermaids, though the mermaids of the Scotch, 

 and of the rest of the north of Europe, to which these 

 herbivorous cetacea very seldom, if ever, come, have 

 most probably been albino seals, unfortunates which 

 the rest of these wily animals are said to drive from 

 the common society, and compel to sit solitary among 

 the rocks. 



In their general characters, these animals appear 

 to be intermediate, between the cetacea of the ocean 

 and the seals, though they partake more of the 

 general characters, especially of the structural and 

 physiological ones, of the former. They have the 

 stomach divided into four separate sacs, of which two 

 are lateral, and the intestine is furnished with a very 

 large caecum. The breathing holes are perforated in 

 the upper part of the skull, as in the other cetacea, 

 but they are continued in the soft parts to the termi- 

 nation of the muzzle. The lips are thick, the upper 

 one usually divided in front, enlarged at the sides, 

 and beset with bristly hairs. The external openings 

 of the ears are very small, and concealed by the 

 epidermis ; the eyes are also small, but have the 

 expression of those of land animals. The swimming 

 parts are larger and rather more developed than 

 those of the marine cetacea. The fingers are larger, 

 though they are included for their whole length in the 

 membranes, and some of them at least terminate in 

 rudiments] nails. They arc rather ungainly walking 

 apparatus, but they still enable the animals to make 

 a sort of progressive motion along the banks, to 

 which they resort to traverse the herbage. 



The posterior termination of their bodies is a tail, 

 as in the cetacea, and not the union of a tail and two 

 imperfectly formed swimming paws, as in the seals ; 

 but in some of the species at least there are rudi- 

 ments of the bones of a pelvis imbedded in the flesh 

 of the flanks ; and, imperfectly developed as these 



bones are, they no doubt assist the animals in main- 

 taining their vertical position that is, preventing 

 them from rolling over on the side as they attempt to 

 advance the swimming paw, as is the case with the 

 whales and dolphins. 



There are several species, the history of some of 

 which is not, however, very clearly made out. They 

 have been hitherto found only in the waters of the 

 warmer latitudes ; and those of the Atlantic, and of the 

 Indian and Pacific Oceans, are described as different 

 genera. When we say of the oceans, we principally 

 mean the shores, and estuaries of rivers emptying 

 themselves into the oceans ; because we are not 

 to expect that any vegetable-feeding animal can be 

 pelagic, and keep out in the open sea. As there are, 

 however, many fishes and some reptiles turtle, for 

 instance which live in great part upon the vegetable 

 productions of the tropical seas, it is by no means 

 unlikely that animals of this group may do the same. 



So far as these animals are known, they are all 

 very wild in their dispositions, and their flesh is much 

 better flavoured, and more eagerly sought after as 

 food, than that of any of the other cetacea. 



The Manati (Manatus, Cuvier). By the older 

 naturalists this animal was very incorrectly classed 

 with the mouse (Trichechus], which belongs to the 

 seal family, and has not the structure of the habits of 

 the cetacea. The name Manati is said to have been 

 given to the animal on account of the slight hand*like 

 form of the swimming paws, and has been somewhat 

 strangely metamorphosed into lamantine, by the in- 

 corporation of the article la with the original name. 



These animals have been found only in the great 

 rivers of South America and of Africa, which dis- 

 charge their waters into the Atlantic within the 

 tropics ; the Amazon and its branches especially on 

 the American side, and the Senegal and Gambia on 

 the African. In the Niger, and its continuation to 

 the bight of Benin, and the Quorra, these animals are 

 not known to any great extent, but it is most likely 

 that they may also be found there, and probably in 

 the river of Congo, though the current of that may 

 be too rapid, and its banks too steep and rugged for 

 animals whose powers of motion upon land are so 

 limited. Those which are found in the African rivers 

 are described as differing from the American ones, 

 so that there may perhaps be two species, Amcricanus 

 and Africanus, and probably varieties of one or of both. 

 At present, however, our information, especially as 

 respects those 6f Africa, is rather vague. 



In America, on the other hand, they are well 

 known ; and along the whole valley of the Amazon, 

 up almost to the mountains, their flesh forms a con- 

 siderable part of the food of the people. 



The characters of the manati are : the body oblong 

 when seen on the side ; the tail fin oval and rather 

 elongated ; the grinders eight, with square flat 

 crowns, marked with transverse ridges ; but the 

 adult animals have neither incisive nor canine teeth. 

 The young s^re said, however, to have two sharp and 

 pointed teeth in the intermaxillary bones, but these 

 disappear at a very early age. The paws have the 

 rudimental nails which have been mentioned, but 

 they are seldom complete on all the fingers ; still 

 they give some support to the termination of the 

 paws. 



These animals are locally known by the name of 

 vacca marina, or sea-cow, and certainly they form in 

 many respects the nearest approach to the genus bos, 



