MAMMALIA. 



as compared with the size of the animals. Fn)m the 

 position of the swimming fin, or lobe, on the extremity 

 of the tail, that organ strikes the water upwards and 

 downwards ; and thus it is equally efficient for ascent 

 and descent as tor progressive motion. Ctivier was 

 the first who collected the whole of the cetacea into 

 one order according to their organisation, by sepa- 

 rating the herbivorous ones from the morses, with 

 which they had been previously confounded. The 

 general structure of these, as adapting them to their 

 element, is the same as that of the more characte- 

 ristic ones, the difference consisting chiefly in the 

 adaptation of their feeding organs to food of a 

 different description, namely, food which requires to 

 be ground, or rather bruised, by teeth, instead of 

 being conveyed entire to the stomach, and wholly 

 assimilated by the action of that organ in the viscera, 

 as it is in all the rest of the cetacea. They thus may 

 be formed into two families, and those very natural 

 ones, the herbivorous and the ordinary cetacea, as 

 they are most characteristically named by the great 

 naturalist who first established the order on its proper 

 structural basis. 



Herbivorous cetacea. All the teeth of these have 

 flat crowns, which is the truly herbivorous character ; 

 and the swimming paws of some of them are furnished 

 with little claws or nails, by means of which they can 

 crawl or climb wholly or partly out of the water, so 

 as to reach and feed upon the grass or other vegeta- 

 tion near the margin. The females have two pectoral 

 mamm ; and both sexes have whiskers of produced 

 hairs, which gives them, when half out of the water, 

 a very slight resemblance to human bodies ; and 

 there is little doubt that this resemblance, in animals 

 which are rarely seen, except in parts of the world 

 very imperfectly and we may add fabulously known 

 to the ancients, gave rise to all the ridiculous stories 

 about sirens, and tritons, and mermaids, and old men 

 of the sea; nor is it at all unlikely that the type of 

 Father Neptune of the old mythology, and that of the 

 Davy Jones of modern sailors, were borrowed from 

 well-whiskered veteran animals of this family. Now, 

 though they are large animals, they are exceedingly 

 harmless ; though those which live upon sea-weed 

 may be more active, and come nearer the shores when 

 a storm is about to loosen their food ; for it is a very 

 general instinct of animals, both of the sea and of the 

 land, to feel the circumstances which bring them a 

 supply of food, and to arrive at the place in order to 

 receive it. We are far from saying that the animal 

 has any knowledge of what is coming, in the sense in 

 which we use knowledge as expressive of mental 

 judgment founded upon reasoning from experience. 

 So far from this, that we feel perfectly sure that no 

 animal has any knowledge of the future, or even of 

 the past, in the sense in which we use the word, and 

 sometimes apply it incautiously to them. 



It does not follow from this, however, that these 

 and many other animals may not foretel to us the 

 coming of storms, or other changes of the weather ; 

 for there are many such indications, in which no ani- 

 mal is concerned. When the light cirri play in more 

 than ordinary numbers and activity in our summer 

 sky, or when the moon shows a zone of gummy light 

 in the winter, the chances are many to one that we 

 shall have foul weather ; and yet surely nobody will 

 pretend to say that either the light clouds in the 

 upper air, or the peculiar reflection or refraction of 

 'he moonlight which forms the lunar zone, can have 



any knowledge of the weather. The indication which 

 they give, belongs, however, to the very same class 

 as that given by animals, whether of the land or of 

 the waters. 



There is a considerable difference between the 

 breathing of those herbivorous cetacea, and that of 

 the true ones. The latter breathe through apertures in 

 the top of the head ; and thus they can breathe 

 though the muzzle is entirely under water. In the 

 herbivora the openings come through the bones of 

 the head nearly in the same manner as in the others, 

 though, as the fore part of the head does not require 

 to be largely produced for the same purpose as in the 

 others, they rise nearer the termination of the muzzle. 

 They do not, however, open even there, but descend 

 to nostrils placed in the front, so that celacea of this 

 kind cannot breathe without raising the muzzle, in 

 part at least, out of the water ; and thus they do not 

 require the blowing apparatus of the other cetacea. 



Their organs of digestion correspond with the 

 herbivorous character of the teeth : they do not rumi- 

 nate, but their stomach is formed into four sacs, two 

 of which are continuous and two lateral ; and the 

 intestine is furnished with a large caeca! appendage. 

 There are three distinct genera of those herbivorous 

 cetacea. The first is the manati, which name has 

 been corrupted to lamantin. Of this there are two 

 species, one of the tropical rivers and estuaries of 

 America, and the other of the rivers of the correspond- 

 ing latitude in Africa, both of which rivers discharge 

 their waters into the tropical Atlantic ; and it is not 

 understood that either of these species is found in any 

 other part of the tropical waters. In the Amazon on 

 the one hand, and the Senegal and the Gambia on the 

 other, they are exceedingly numerous, more especially 

 in the former, where, at the distance of more than 

 fifteen hundred miles from the sea, they supply the 

 people regularly with abundance of animal food of 

 most excellent quality, resembling veal in appearance, 

 but much more juicy. The animal is the vacca marinet, 

 or sea-cow of that part of the world, and approximates 

 in value to the land cow. 



The second species is the Dugong (Halicore, daughter 

 of the sea), of the north eastern parts of the Indian 

 Ocean and the oriental Archipelago. The mouth of 

 this genus differs considerably from that of the former; 

 for while the manati when full grown has only eight 

 teeth with square flat crowns, the dugong has eight 

 conical ones, united two and two, and the tusks are 

 more persistent. This animal is not described as at- 

 taining so large a size as the former, which often 

 exceeds twenty feet in length ; but its flesh is not 

 inferior in quality. 



The only other genus is the stellere, which has 

 been observed in the northern parts of the Pacific. 

 It is different from the others, more exclusively ma- 

 rine ; and it is understood to feed exclusively on sea- 

 weed ; and it has but one tooth in each side of both 

 jaws, which tooth consists of a plate of some extent, 

 furnished with ridges of enamel fitted for bruising. 

 Its stomach is more simple than that of the other two 

 genera ; but its caecum is very large. Less is known 

 respecting it than respecting the others, because it 

 more rarely makes its appearance on the shores ; and 

 its paws are not provided with those claws which 

 enable the others to crawl up the banks, as the ordi- 

 nary cetacea. 



As these are better known, and have been alluded 

 to already in the course of this article, we shall do 



