Page 138. 
304 ON THE MANATEE. 
Tnches 
Breadth of snout halfway down ............ 55 
Height of snout at middle line.............. 3 
From ear to ear over head ..............0. 8°75 
From eye to eye above head................ 6°4 
From ear to eye on one side................ 5°75 
Whether in Dr. Murie’s figured specimen the snout and front part 
of the head had been swollen during life, whether the enlargement 
was the result of post mortem change, or whether it was on account of 
the youth of the individual, that part of the body is represented of 
considerably larger proportionate size with reference to the rest of the 
animal than it was in the Society’s living example, in which the head 
. was more distinctly like a clean-cut truncated cone, without any well- 
marked transverse folds or appearance of puffiness. 
It is, however, in the oral margin of the upper lip that the dead- 
ness of Dr. Murie’s specimen is. most manifest; and the fact that the 
peculiarity in the mechanism of that organ has not yet (so far as I am 
aware) been described, indicates how impossible it sometimes is to 
predict special functions from anatomical structure alone. 
The upper lip is prehensile; in other words, the animal is able, by 
its unaided means, to introduce food placed before it into the mouth 
without the assistance of the comparatively insignificant lower lip. 
To understand how this is accomplished it is necessary that the struc- 
ture of the labial margin should be described. 
A front view of the head, Plate [11] XXVIII, fig. 2, shows that 
on each side of the narrow median portion of the superior labial 
margin of the oral orifice depends a rounded lateral lip-pad of con- 
siderable size, which gives a deeply notched appearance to the upper 
lip. Of these lip-pads, Dr. Murie tells us* that “at the dependent 
angle on each side of the muzzie is a circumscribed oval prominence 
half an ineh in diameter, where the ridges, furrows, and bristles 
[found elsewhere] are specially pronounced. This spot would seem 
to possess most tactile delicacy; for twigs of the infraorbital and 
facial nerves are abundant thereto. . . . . The above dispo- 
sition strongly reminds one of the moustachial apparatus of the 
Walrus; but their shortness and rigidity render them unequal to 
perform the office of a sieve, as is the case in the Pinniped: they 
therefore incline to the hirsute covering of the muzzle of the Hip- 
popotamus.” In another placet the same author, speaking of the 
lifting muzzle of the upper lip (the levator labii superioris proprius), 
remarks, ‘“‘ Many vessels penetrate the root and origin of this levator ; 
* “ Tyansactions of the Zoological Society,” VIII, p. 133. 
t+ Lee. cit. p. 149. 
