steller's account of the sea cow. li 7 



covered over with a nervous inembraue, which is perforated with many black pores. 

 From each pore grows a bristle as thick as cobbler's waxed-end, a half inch long; 

 they are easy to pull out, and they take the place of vibrissae in other animals. 



The eyes are situated exactly half way between the end of the snout and the ears 

 in a line parallel with the top of the nostrils, or just a very little higher. They are 

 very small in proportion to so huge a body, being no larger than a sheep's eyes. They 

 are not provided with shutters, or lids, or any other external apparatus, but protrude 

 from the skin through a round opening, scarcely a half inch in diameter. The iris of 

 the eye is black, the ball livid; the canthi of the eye are not seen except when the skin 

 is cut away around the opening of the eye. At the inner canthus of the eye there is 

 a cartilaginous crest (precisely like that of the sea otter), which, when necessity arises, 

 covers over the whole eye and takes the place of a nictitating membrane adapted to 

 warding off and removing any injury that might chance to fall while the animal feeds. 

 This cartilaginous crest in the back part constitutes one wall of the lachrymal sac, 

 -with which it is joined by a common nervous membrane. When the lachrymal sac is 

 cut a great amount of sticky mucus is found in its cavity. The sac itself would 

 easily hold a chestnut, and inside it is enveloped m a glandular membrane. 



The ears outside open only with a small hole, like the seal's. There is not the 

 slightest trace of an external ear, and the holes can be seen only by examining very 

 closely; for the opening of the ears can not be distinguished from the rest of the pores, 

 and would scarcely admit the quill of a chicken's feather. The internal canal of the 

 ears is smooth and covered with a highly polished black skin, and when the muscles 

 of the occiput are separated from it, as they may easily be, it betrays itself by its 

 own color and can be seen. 



The tongue is 12 inches long and 2^ inches wide, and is like that of an ox. It is 

 pointed at the end and the surface is rough with short papillae like a file. It is so 

 deeply hidden away in the fauces that to many the animal has seemed to be without 

 a tongue; for drawn as far forward as it may be by the hand, it still can not be made 

 to reach the froenum, but will fall short of it by 1^ inches. If it were longer, as in 

 other animals, it would be in the way in mastication. 



The head, like the neck, is ill defined, and joins the body in such a way that a 

 line of distinction is nowhere visible, as is the case with all fishes ; but what obscurely 

 suggests a neck is shorter by one-half than the head itself, and is cylindrical and more 

 slender than the occiput in circumference. Notwithstanding, it is not only constructed 

 with movable vertebrae, but has its independent action, a motion observed in the 

 living animal only when it feeds; for it bends its head in the same way as cattle on 

 dry land, but the thick and shapeless cuticle makes the quiet or dead animal look 

 as though it were provided with an immovable neck, for no trace of vertebrae is to 

 be seen at all. 



From the shoulders toward the umbilical region it grows rapidly wider, and 

 from there on to the anus it again grows rapidly slender ; the sides are roundish and 

 paunched like a belly which is swollen with a great mass of intestines, and elastic and 

 puffed up like an inflated skin, and diminishes in size from the umbilical region toward 

 the anus, and again from the mammae toward the neck. 



When the animals are fat, as they are in spring and summer, the back is slightly 

 convex; but in winter, when they are thin, the back is flat and excavated at the spine 

 with a hollow on either side, and at such times all the vertebrae with their spinous 

 processes can be seen. 



