THE ELEPHANT 



food. The neck is slightly indicated; the two i 



situated at the upper pari of the snout, and the lips are 



■ with Btiff bristles, while the mamma are siti 

 between the fore legs. The latter arc of moderate length, 

 with five well developed digits, but still flu-like and bent 

 at the elbows. The brain is narrow compared with tha 

 Cetaceans, and the heart is deeply fissured between the 

 ventricles. The manatees of America (Fig. 305) and the 

 dugongof Au-tralia and India i I »6) live in the mouths 



of large rivers, feeding on sea-weeds and aquatic plants 

 the grass along the shore. The Floridan manatee {Ma 

 tus Americanus) grows to a length of from tw< early 



three metn it feet). It ranges from Florida to the 



Amazons, where it is called Vacca marina; it ascends that 

 river as far as Pebas, Peru, and is killed and eaten, its 

 flesh resembling beef. Steller's manati 

 was in the last century found in abundance on the si 

 of Beh ring's Island on the coast of Kamtchatka. Twcnty- 



n years afterwards (in 1768) it was totally extermin 

 by the sailors who visited that locality, and only a few im- 

 perfect skeletons now exist in the museums of v P 

 burg and Stockholm. This is the largest Sirenian known: 

 it was over six metres (about twenty feet) in length. It 

 differed remarkably from the other forms in having no 

 teeth, hut was provided with a very large, horny, palatine 



. and a correBp mding one covering the enlarged p 

 of union (symphysis) of the lower jaw-. In the Tertiarv 

 Period a fossil Sirenian (Halitherium) inhabited tin - 



of western Europe. 



In the structure of the skull, the nature of their teeth, 

 and their herbivorous habits the Sirenians in a desn 

 nect the Cetaceans with the Unglllat 



Orderl, Prol scidia. — Only two repres of this 



group are now in existence, the Asiatic and African 

 pliant, a number of other forms having becon 

 The group is well circumscribed, when we consider the 

 living specie?, hut in the early (Eocene) Tertiary Period 



