THE MANATEE. 447 
prey. Its color is grayish-black upon the back, and white on the abdomen. The eye is wonder- 
fully small, being only one-eighth of an inch in diameter in a Soosoo which measures four or 
five feet in length. There is no dorsal fin, its place being indicated by a small projection. 
SIRENIA. 
MANATEES AND DUGONGS, 
THE small but singular group of animals that are classed together under the title of the 
SIRENIA, are so formed that anatomists have had much difficulty in deciding upon their proper 
position in the animal kingdom. Many parts of their structure exhibit so strong an affinity to 
MANATEE.—Manatus americanus. 
the pachydermata, or thick-skinned mammalia, that they have been placed next to the 
elephants by some zoologists, while their fish-like form and aquatic habits have induced other 
writers to place them in the position which they now occupy in the British Museum. They 
feed chiefly on vegetable substances, and find the greater part of their subsistence in the thick 
herbage that edges the waters where they reside. Their nostrils are placed at the extremity of 
the muzzle, as is the case with most mammalia, and they are never employed as blow-holes, 
after the manner of the cetaceans, 
THE MANATEE, or LAMANTINE, is a very strange-looking creature, appearing like a curious 
mixture of several dissimilar animals, the seal and hippopotamus being predominant. 
There are several species of Manatee, two of which are found in America and one in Africa, 
but always on those shores which are washed by the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, The com- 
mon Manatee is generally about nine or ten feet in length, and is remarkable for the thick 
fleshy disc which terminates the muzzle, and in which the nostrils are placed. It is found in 
some plenty at the mouths of sundry large rivers, such as the Orinoko or the Amazon, and 
feeds upon the algze and other herbage which grows so plentifully in those regions. By some 
