230 SEA FABLES EXPLAINED. 



as a connecting link between the hippopotamus, elephant, 

 etc. on the one side, and the whales and seals on the other. 



The Halitherium was a Sirenian with which we are only 

 acquainted by its fossil remains found in the Miocene 

 formation of Central and Southern Europe. These indicate 

 that it had short hind limbs, and, consequently, approached 

 more nearly the terrestrial type than either the manatee, 

 the rytina, or the dugong, in which the hind limbs are 

 absent. The two last named tend more than does the 

 manatee to the marine mammals ; but there is a strong 

 likeness between these three recent forms. They all have 

 a cylindrical body, like that of a seal, but instead of hind 

 limbs there is in all a broad tail flattened horizontally ; and 

 the chief difference in their outward appearance is in the 

 shape of this organ. In the manatee it is rounded, in the 

 dugong forked like that of a whale, in the rytina crescent- 

 shaped. The tail of the Halitherium appears to have been 

 shaped somewhat like that of the beaver. The body of 

 the manatee is broader in proportion to its length and 

 depth than that of the dugong. In a paper read before the 

 Royal Society, July I2th, 1821, on a manatee sent to 

 London in spirits by the Duke of Manchester, then 

 Governor of Jamaica, Sir Everard Home remarked of this 

 greater lateral expansion that, as the manatee feeds on 

 plants that grow at the mouths of great rivers, and the 

 dugong upon those met with in the shallows amongst 

 small islands in the Eastern seas, the difference of form 

 would make the manatee more buoyant, and better fitted 

 to float in fresh water. 



In all the Manatidce the mammae of the female, which 

 are greatly distended during the period of lactation, are 

 situated very differently from those of the whales, being 

 just beneath the pectoral fins. These fins or paws are 



