SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE. 



{See pp. 74-75.) 



THE DUGONG, HALICORE DUUONG, LEGUAT'S 

 " MANATl". 



Leguat was the first Europeau to record the existence and observe 

 the habits of the remarkable animal forming the subject of this 

 note. During the iiearly three years' stay he and his companions 

 made on the island of Rodriguez, they vised it as their principal food, 

 and had unexamjjled opportunities of observing it. The account 

 he gives of it is in the main quite in accord with the investigations 

 of modern naturalists. I must premise these remarks by saying 

 that the whole subject of the Sirenia has been treated in an ex- 

 haustive way in the Proceedings of learned societies, and there is 

 really nothing new to add ; but the readers of our books like to 

 have before them the opinions of modern authorities on points of 

 interest touched upon by the early travellers. 



The geographical distribution of the Sirenia, as Dr. H. Woodward 

 has shown in his ti'eatises,^ extended iu pre-historic times over a 

 very wide area, fossil remains of no less than twenty-seven species 

 having been discovered in Tertiary strata as far north as lat. 

 60° N., and as far south as the tropic of Cancer. These 

 earlier species may be considered the ancestors of existing 

 forms, differing, however, so much from them as to suggest inter- 

 vening links which have not yet been found ; though it has been 

 ascertained that -when changes took place in the physical con- 

 ditions of European seas the genus Halithermm prevailed.^ 



1 Geol Mar/., 1885, Dec. 3, vol. ii, pp. 412-25 ; and Quart. Journ. 

 Geol. Soc. Loud., 1885, vol. xli, pp. 457-72. 



2 H. Woodward, op. cit. 



