THE MANATEE. 345 



The next morning I rose long before day and 

 proceeded to the place, intending to procure the skin 

 for preservation. But when I arrived, the negro 

 butcher had already killed the animal, and partly cut 

 it up, so that my purpose was frustrated. I had the 

 pleasure, however, of breakfasting on steaks of its 

 flesh, which was of delicious flavour, without any 

 oiliness : its taste was something between veal and 

 pork, rather approaching the latter. The carcase 

 was eagerly bought up in joints, as a delicacy for the 

 table. 



I am well pleased to be able to add some further 

 notes of this little known but very interesting aquatic 

 Pachyderm. My excellent friend, Mr. Hill, writing 

 under date of the 8th December, 1848, from Spanish 

 Town, gives me the following account. 



" In the month of August last some fishermen 

 from Old Harbour brought up hither a Manati, which 

 they succeeded in keeping alive several days by 

 taking it early every morning to the river. I saw 

 it immediately after they brought it into town. 

 Its periodically long intervals of expiration and in- 

 spiration, in which it opened out its otherwise closely- 

 compressed nostrils, and snorted ; and its convulsive 

 flappings of the tail, broad, stiff", and horizontal, 

 like the spasmodic jerkings of a lobster, were all very 

 marked incidents in its economy. The snout, long 

 and cylindrical, with a very decided turgescence, so 

 as to make the diameter of the root less than that 

 of the middle ; — the exceedingly discal character 

 of the extremity, with the remarkably shorn-like 

 bristles about it, were very curious features, and 

 Q 5 



