A TROPIC GARDEN 235 



manatee, and occasionally to scratch themselves 

 "when leeches irritate. The courtship of sea- 

 cows, the qualities which appeal most to their 

 dull minds, the way they protect the callow 

 youngsters from voracious crocodiles, how or 

 wliere they sleep — of all this we are ignorant. 

 We belong to the same class, but the line be- 

 tween water and air is a no man's land which 

 neither of us can pass for more than a few sec- 

 onds. 



When their big black hulks heaved slowly up- 

 ward, it brought to my mind the huge glistening 

 backs of elephants bathing in Indian streams; 

 and this resemblance is not wholly fantastic. 

 "Not far from the oldest Egyptian ruins, excava- 

 tions have brought to light ruins millions of 

 Vears more ancient — the fossil bones of o^reat 

 creatures as strangle as any that live in the realm 

 of fairyland or fiction. Am.ong them was re- 

 vealed the ancestry of elephants, which was also 

 that of manatees. Far back in geological times 

 the tapir-like Moeritherimn, which wandered 

 through Eocene swamps, had within itself the 

 prophecy of two diverse lines. One would gain 

 great tuslis and a long, mobile trunk and live its 

 life in distant tropical jungles; and another 



