A TAME MANATEE. 347 



bosom. A mass of thick flesh forms its lips. It has 

 molar teeth with square crowns and transverse pro- 

 jections, but no incisors, those of the jaw sufficing 

 to crush the aquatic grasses, and the shore herbs on 

 which it feeds. 



" With locomotive powers little suited to enable it 

 to seek the land, as the Seal does, the Manati is 

 almost exclusively an inhabitant of the water. It 

 seldom does more to relieve itself from this element, 

 than raising its head above the stream. It coasts 

 the green banks, and crops the bordering herbage as 

 it swims along. The friend, at whose home on the 

 Yasica I was staying, when I saw this specimen of 

 the Manati, informed me that some time previous 

 to my coming on this visit, he had surprised some 

 six of these tenants of the river in an inlet which he 

 used as a timber dock. He confined them there 

 until they had cropped all the long aquatic weeds 

 that lined the bottom of the inlet ; and they grazed 

 harmlessly and seemed to sufier no apprehension 

 from their state of restraint. I tasted the flesh some 

 years ago ; — it was like beef : the fat was crisp and 

 delicate. Its vegetable food might reasonably be ex- 

 pected to give it this similarity to the flesh of animals 

 that graze the field. Purchas, in his ' Pilgrims,' 

 gives an interesting account of a Manati, which one 

 of the Caciques of Hispaniola had tamed * in a lake,' 

 as he expresses it, ' of standing water,' giving this 

 narrative of the 'River Cow' on the authority of 

 Peter Martyr."* 



* This anecdote, though not resting on scientific authority, is worth 

 transcribing. The picture was probably drawn from the life ; and 

 Q 6 



