132 DE. J. MUEIE ON THE FORM AND STETJCTUEE OP THE MANATEE. 



towards the angle of the mouth, where it is quite a cleft. Vrolik's figures well define 

 it, Stannius's less so. Between it and the eye there is a second notable, but narrower, 

 groove. At the vertex another deep furrow runs round quite to the angles of the lower 

 jaw. Betwixt these there are shorter and shallower grooves, some of them obliquely 

 joining those described. 



There are no very determinate upper and lower eyelids ; but radiating round the 

 palpebral fissure are a series of crooked wrinkles. These, I have been told by those 

 who have seen the living animal, are twisted together in the act of closing the eye. 



Vrolik's artist has so circumscribed these ocular radii by an external dark, broad, 

 circular line, as to deceive any ordinary observer by the supposition that the animal has 

 a large patent eyeball. This deception is further heightened by a heavy backwardly 

 overlapping orbital fold, which certainly was not present in either of the specimens 

 examined by me. The text, however, corrects this misapprehension, as the author 

 pointedly alludes to the diminutive eye of the Manatee. 



Besides those very long grooves and tegumentary areas just mentioned, a striking 

 feature of the head, and notably so on its upper half, are the rough scale-like patches. 

 These circumscribed elevated spots are in-egularly shaped, though chiefly roundish, 

 flat on their upper surface, some smooth, others roughened or minutely pitted, as is the 

 rest of the skin. They vary in size from o to Q, on the vertex give a nailed appear- 

 ance, and on the side of the face subdivide the rugged skin into elongated and diamond- 

 shaped corrugations. 



The pectoral extremity, as has been noted by others, is sunk into a great shoulder-fold. 

 As far as the elbow there are deepish transversely oblique skin-folds ; but the 

 remainder of the limb presents only minute wrinkling. The axillary creases are 

 short and decussating. Both on the outer and inner aspects of the flattened limb 

 the surface is studded with the small warty flattened bodies spoken of as existing on 

 the head. In the limb, however, they are much more uniform in outline and size. 

 The body, from the obscurely defined neck backwards to the loin-constriction, possesses 

 multitudinous encircling narrow linear plaits, which run parallel to each other, and 

 frequently obliquely interdigitate. This gives to the skin a kind of velvety structure, 

 increased in semblance by the sombre tint of the derm. Behind the shoulders several 

 massive folds are mapped out rather than project ; and these are carried from the back 

 round the chest. Upon the sides and shoulders tuberculated scale-patches, resembling 

 those on the head, are here and there distributed. Numerous short, but irregular, 

 longitudinal wrinkles are met with upon the throat and abdomen. 



The marked broad but sudden constriction immediately behind the ribs, forming a 

 loin-girdle, consists below of two large hoop-like folds, the one before the other, the 

 anus being set midway between them, and the vulva just anteriorly in the female. As 

 these folds reach the back, their boundary furrows augment and increase the number of 

 the folds, while their height is diminished accordingly. 



