346 HAITI. 



never properly represented but in your exquisite 

 little sketches of the Westmoreland specimen. 



" This Manati was a female about ten feet long. 

 It had become sufficiently familiar to grunt in answer 

 to its name, Bessy. After exhausting curiosity here, 

 the fishermen took it on to Kingston by railway ; 

 but its exposure to the midday sun in its journey so 

 exhausted it, that if it did not die of fatigue, they 

 found themselves necessitated, for fear it would, — 

 at once to slaughter it, that they might keep it 

 marketable at the shambles. It was readily bought 

 up, and spoken of, as deliciously tasted meat." 



In a previous letter my friend had communicated 

 some notes of a Manatee that had fallen under his 

 observation, during a sojourn in Eastern Haiti. " On 

 the sands, which throw back the waters of the Yasica 

 at its embouchure, and spread them out into a wind- 

 ing lakelet, a Manati that had been wounded up the 

 river, had come and died. That was the first animal 

 of the kind I had seen. In body it is shaped like 

 the Seal; — but its face has a character decidedly 

 cow-like. It is very obviously the ultimate link of 

 the fluviatile pachydermata with the cetacea. Its 

 fore legs are shapeless, being neither claws nor fins. 

 Placed near the head so as very inefiiciently to assist 

 the motion of its great bulk on land, it was rather 

 surprising to see that it had crept so completely out 

 of the water as to lie dry upon the beach. Its eyes 

 are small, and the orifices which form its ear-holes 

 are narrow slits, scarcely perceptible. It has breasts 

 like those of a woman, placed forward between the 

 paws, and projecting with the swelling rotundity of a 



