230 DESCRIPTION OF BERING ISLAND 



skin and flesh it resembles in some measure a buffalo head, 

 particularly as concerns the lips. In the mouth it has on each 

 side^*^ in place of teeth two wide, longish, flat, loose^^" bones, ^^^ of 

 which one is fastened above to the palate, the other to the inside 

 of the lower jaw. Both are provided with many obliquely con- 

 verging ^^2 furrows and raised welts with which the animal grinds 

 up the seaweeds, its usual food. The lips are provided with 

 many strong bristles, of which those on the lower jaw are so 

 thick that they resemble quills of fowls and clearly demonstrate 

 by their internal hollowness the structure of the hairs.^^^ jhe 

 eyes of this animal in spite of its size are not larger than sheeps' 

 eyes [and are] without eyelids. The ears are so small and hidden 



1^9 "on each side" is not in the MS. 



150 "longish, flat, loose" is not in the MS. 



151 The two "flat bones" mentioned by Steller were in reality horny 

 structures, as demonstrated by Professor J. F. Brandt of the St. Peters- 

 burg Academy of Sciences, who, finding part of these plates attached to 

 a skull in the collections of the Academy, has made and published a 

 thorough microscopic examination of their minute structure. He demon- 

 strated the cellulo-epithelial and partly tubulo-papillar nature of these 

 plates and correlated them with the horny tuberculate plates in the 

 mouths of the dugong and manati (J. F. Brandt: Uber den Zahnbau 

 der Steller'schen Seekuh, Mhnoires de I'Acad. Imp. des Set. de St. Petas- 

 bourg, Ser. 6, Vol. 2, 1833, pp. 103-118; Symbolae Sirenologicae, Fasc. 

 ii et iii, 1868. pp. 102-108). 



152 Instead of " obliquely converging " the MS has "krumm," crooked. 

 curved. 



153 Instead of "the structure of the hairs" the MS reads: "the real 

 nature of hairs in general, which likewise are hollow." A piece of the 

 skin of the Bering Island sea cow was discovered by Dr. Alexander 

 Brandt in 1871 among some miscellaneous old collections in the Academy 

 of Sciences, St. Petersburg. In the elaborate paper describing it he shows 

 that the structure of the skin does not essentially differ from that of the 

 other known sirenians. It is constructed of elongate filamentary cuticular 

 papillae, which Steller mistook for hairs (Alexander Brandt: Uber die 

 Haut der nordischen Seekuh, Memoires de I'Acad. Imp. des Sci. de St. 

 Peter shoiirg, Ser. 7, \'ol. 7, 1871, 28 pp. with i pi.; James Murie: On the 

 Skin etc. of the Rhytina, Suggested by a Recent Paper by Dr. A. Brandt, 

 Annals and Magaz. of Nat. Hist., Ser. 4, Vol. 9, London, 1872, pp. 306- 

 313, with PI. 19). 



