190 THE FUR SEALS OF THE PRIBILOF ISLANDS. 



properly so called, with a sort of vestibule, and makes a kind of hymen. But the 

 aperture between the coruua of this membrane is so large that the penis of the male 

 can without any difficulty enter the vagina. The vagina itself is 9i inches long and 

 covered with a very strong, fibrous membrane, which is ribbed longitudinally and 

 hollowed out upon its surface with many furrows; between these furrows are seen a 

 great many glands not larger than a pin's head, which secrete the mucus with which 

 the vagina is covered all over. Next appears the uterus itself, spherical in shape, 

 in size as large as the head of a cat. When I cut it open it was covered with mucus 

 iu the same way as the vagina, and wrinkled with a great number ot folds half an 

 inch wide. The substance of the vagina was so hard that 1 could scarcely cut it with 

 a knife. The ligaments of the uterus and of the fallopian tubes had precisely the same 

 structure as those of a horse. 



The anus is situated 8i inches below the pudenda. It is closed by a sphincter 

 that is not very tightly contracted. In diameter it is 4 inches wide. The sphincter is 

 white; the inside coating of the rectal intestine is smooth, slippery, olive-gray, just 

 as in horses, where it is sometimes black, sometimes white spotted. 



DESCRIPTION OF THE INTERNAL PARTS. 



I opened the heads of four animals, and with the greatest painstaking I searched 

 for the stones, incorrectly so called, of the manatee. But so far was 1 from being able 

 to find anything in the least like a stone or bone that from this I decided tliat either 

 those bones were not found in all of them, or were found only in certain climates, or, 

 what seemed more ])robable, that Schroder and others wlio describe these bones as 

 having the form of a ball, had, like too superficial and xxntrustworthy compilers, given 

 it this round form after the analogy of the bezoar stone, and that they had never 

 with their eyes seen stones or bones of the manatee as tiiey described; and so we 

 should rather understand that they meant the masticatory bones, or those white tooth 

 masses to be found in the palate and inferior maxilla; and this was the more likely, 

 as the description given by the eminent Samuel von Dale in his Pharniacologia 

 coincides with my own; and his description also corresponds to these masticatory 

 bones. For he gives, i)erhaps from autopsy {ex nrro/A;), because he did not under- 

 stand the mechanism of tliese bones, tlie following description: "Tiie stone of the 

 manatee is a white crustaceous bone similar to ivory, taken from the head, and it is of 

 various forms," by which he no doubt meant to indicate the openings and meauderi^igs 

 of various forms to be seen upon the surface of botii bones.' 



Tbe cranium is very solid; it has but little cerebrum, and the cerebrum is not 

 separated from the cerebellum by any bony plate. Of the rest I could observe nothing 

 striking. 



The oesophagus or gullet is very capacious. Inside it is surrounded with a 

 very tough, white, fibrous membrane, and with many perpendi(;ular wrinkles and folds 

 it goes to the stomach, and there, before it ends, it concludes with a large number 

 of little triangular appendices one line long, which turn back upward toward tlie 

 oesophagus. The use of these is, I think, that they may hinder the refiux of the food 



' These bones are undoubtedly the ear bones, and that Steller failed to find them is due to the 

 fact that he looked for them inside the cranial cavity. The ear bones of Rytina are not unlike those 

 of the existing Manatee. — Ed. 



