7132 Cetacea. 



male has never, we believe, been found more than eighteen or twenty 

 feet long. The food of the duyong consists chiefly of inarine vegetables, 

 which it finds at the bottom of inlets, in comparatively shallow water, 

 where it is easily captured. Its flesh resembles good beef, and is much 

 esteemed. The oil obtained from its fat is peculiarly clear and limpid, 

 and is free from any disagreeable smell, such as most animal oils are 

 accompanied with. It has not yet been produced in suflScient quanti- 

 ties to acquire a recognized market value. The blacks 'devour the 

 carcase of the duyong roasted, after expressing the oil for sale to the 

 colonists." * 



In a recent anonymous work, entitled * Eambles at the Antipodes,' 

 &c., pubhshed in 1859, the duyong is mentioned as the yangan of the 

 aborigines. This author, like every other (from the time of Sir Stam- 

 ford Raffles and before), describes the meat of the duyong to be excel- 

 lent, " when fresh having the taste of lender beef, and when salted 

 nearly resembling bacon." Hence, perhaps, the apellation ' sea-pig.' 

 The duyong, it is added, "yields an oil, which is found in cases of 

 scrofula and other diseases to be more eflSicacious than cod-liver oil." 

 The latter would seem to be rising in demand ; worse luck for the 

 animal ! A friend informs us that it is most difficult to obtain even a 

 portion of duyong meat at Malacca ; as no sooner is a specimen 

 captured than it is at once cut up and cooked by the Malays. Hence 

 the difficulty of obtaining museum specimens. 



Of the Indian duyong we possess a small stuffed specimen, presented 

 by the Batavian Society in 1845 ; and the lower jaw, scapulae, and 

 four ribs of a larger but still young individual, recently found in an 

 Andaman hut. The Andaman Islands are the most northern locality 

 as yet ascertained for the species in the Bay of Bengal ; and it must 

 be rare there, or the bones would more frequently be found to decorate 

 those rude lairs (huts they cannot justly be termed), together with the 

 skulls of the small Sus andamanensis and of turtles. On the west coast 

 of Ceylon Mr. Layard notices that duyongs are common in the Gulf 

 of Calpentyn ; the flesh of this animal being there also held in esteem. 

 Sir J. E. 1 ennent, again, remarks their occurrence in all the salt-water 

 inlets from the Gulf of Calpentyn to Adam's Bridge. They are 

 found likewise along the shore and in the salt-water inlets of 

 the Concan, where, as not long ago ascertained by the Rev. 

 J. Baker, jun., of Mundakyum, Alipi, on that coast, they are known 

 to Europeans as the seal. That gentleman took some pains to discover 



* ' Tlie Tluee Culoiiies of Australia,' (p. 337), by Samuel Sidney. 



