Br. H. Woodward — On the Fossil Sirenia. 415 



from Mr. Eobert Damon, ¥'.G.S., a nearly entire skeleton of Ehytina 

 gigns^ (=:Bhijt{na SteUeri') obtained from the Pleistocene Peat- 

 deposits on Behring's Island. 



This interesting species of Siren, commonly known as " Steller's 

 Sea-cow," once no doubt abundant along the shores of Kamtschatka, 

 the Kurile Islands, and Alaska peninsula, but now entirely extinct, 

 was first discovered by the eminent German naturalist Steller, who, 

 in company with Yitus Behring, a captain in the Eussian Navy and 

 a celebrated navigator of the northern seas, was with his vessel and 

 crew cast away upon Behring's Island (where Behring died), in 1741. 



We have fortunately preserved to us Steller's original description ^ 

 of the animal, as seen alive by him, during his long enforced 

 residence on the island ; and no other competent observer has since 

 had the same opportunity; for between 1742 and 1782, a period of 

 forty years, this large and harmless mammal appears to have been 

 entirely extirpated, for the sake of its flesh and hide, around both 

 Behring's Island and Copper Island, to the shores of which iu 

 Steller's time it was limited. 



In his recently published " Voyage of the Vega," Professor A. E. 

 Nordenskiold * has drawn attention to this now extinct Sirenian, and 

 by the description of his eiforts to recover its remains, we learn 

 much as to their present rarity, whilst he graphically portrays the 

 habits of Ehytina and its general appearance, as gathered from the 

 bibliographical notices given by Steller, who alone seems to have 

 left any record of the living animal. 



The bones of the Bliyttna are not be seen anywhere lying upon 

 the surface of the ground in either of the two islands, nor do they 

 occur along the shore at the level of the sea, but they are met with 

 at a distance from the shore in old raised beaches and the Post- 

 Tertiary peat-mosses, deeply buried and thickly overgrown with 

 luxuriant grass. It would be next to impossible to find them by 

 digging, but they are found by boring into the peat with an iron 

 rod or some such tool. The same method is adopted in the peat- 

 deposits in Ireland, when one desires to find a timber-tree for gate- 

 posts ; or when seeking for remains of the gigantic Irish Deer, 

 Cerviis Mhernicus ; the resistance ofi"ered to and the sound emitted 

 by the boring-rod, when in contact with a solid, is at once noticed 

 by the operator. The specimen of Ehytina now in the British 

 Museum was obtained from compact peat, and all the vertebrge and 

 other bones having cavities in them were full of peat-growth when 

 they arrived, as was also the skull. 



Although specimens of Ehytina are preserved in several Museums, 

 as at St. Petersburg, at Helsingfors in Finland, and in Stockholm, 



^ Zimmermann, 1780. 



^ Desniarest, 1819. 



' " De Bestiis marinis, auctore Geor^. Wilhelm. Stellero," etc., Mem. Acad. Sci. 

 St. Petersbourg (read 1745, published 1751), torn. ii. pp. 294-330. 



^ " The Voyage of the Vega round Asia aud Europe," Loiidou, 1881, vol. ii. pp. 

 272-281. 



