OCEANIC MAMMALS 545 



markably abundant on the west coast in the various rivers and 

 creeks between Tampa Bay and Cape Sable, but he had never 

 seen it in Mosquito or Halifax Lagoons and believed it did not 

 occur there. True (1884b) quotes Silas Stearns, a correspond- 

 ent living formerly at Pensacola, in the western part of Florida, 

 who states: "I have heard of their being taken in the Myakka 

 River, Peace Creek, Caloosahatchie River and other small 

 streams south of Charlotte Harbor and Okeechobee Lake, on 

 the Gulf side ... On the Gulf coast . . . the oldest 

 settlers say that ten, fifteen, or twenty years ago Manatees 

 were occasionally seen in nearly all the inland rivers from Key 

 West westward to ... Pensacola, Mobile, and New 

 Orleans . . . During the summer of 1880 I saw one in 

 Santa Rosa Sound, some twenty miles east of Pensacola, where 

 there has been none seen for many years. While landing a 

 sail-boat on the island we surprised the animal in shoal water 

 and had a fine opportunity to examine it." Gunter (1941) 

 reports as the only known record for Louisiana, a skull found at 

 Calcasieu Lake, in January, 1929, but to which subspecies it 

 may be referred he does not tell. Whether the range of the 

 Florida manatee is continuous from the mouth of the Missis- 

 sippi southward to the coast of southern Mexico does not seem 

 clear, though one might suppose that it does not at the present 

 time, occur so far to the westward, since the northern waters 

 of the Gulf are probably too cool or subject to occasional cold 

 spells. 



Manatees have at various times been caught alive and kept 

 in aquaria at zoological gardens, as at Philadelphia, New 

 York, and London. Their natural food seems to be various 

 species of such grasses as Panicum, which grows floating in 

 shoal water; but in captivity they show somewhat more 

 catholic taste, and at Philadelphia were found to take freely 

 "various garden vegetables cabbage, celery tops, spinach, 

 kale, baked apples, and others, while they devoured as well 

 quantities of the aquatic plant Vallisneria spiralis, and the 

 sea-weed Ulva latissima. The Central Park [New York] 

 specimen seems to have been more dainty, rejecting a variety 

 of aquatic plants but at length accepting Canna and rockweed 

 (Fucus vesiculosus) ! " In the London Gardens a captive was 

 offered a choice of various foods and finally selected watercress, 

 cabbage, and lettuce, consuming an average of about 100 



