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 

 where 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 

 years more ancient the fossil bones of great 

 creatures as strange as any that live in the realm 

 of fairyland or fiction. Among them was re- 

 vealed the ancestry of elephants, which was also 

 that of manatees. Far back in geological times 

 the tapir-like Moeritherium, which wandered 

 through Eocene swamps, had within itself the 

 prophecy of two diverse lines. One would gain 

 great tusks and a long, mobile trunk and live its 

 life in distant tropical jungles; and another 



