ON AN ALMOST PERFECT SKELETON OF EnXTINA GIGAS. 45' 



33. On an almost perfect Se:eleton of Ehttina gigas * (Ehttina 

 SiELLERi t, " Sieller's Sea-cow "), ohtainecl hy Mr. Egbert 

 Damon, F.G.^.,from the Pleistocene Peat-deposits on Behring's 

 Island. By Henry Woodward, LL.D., P.E.S., P.G.S., &c. 

 (Eead March 25, 1885.) 



The extinction of any group of animals by the influence of man or 

 other agencies cannot fail to be a subject of interest to the 

 palaeontologist. Unfortunately the list of exterminated species has 

 now become extremely large, and it seems impossible to doubt that 

 in a few more j'ears all the larger Mammalia not reduced to 

 domestication, or under protective legislation, will have succumbed 

 to man the destroyer. 



The musk-sheep, bison, giraffe, African elephant, wild deer, 

 antelopes, and the large-horned wild sheep of the Alpine ranges, 

 are all eagerly stalked down by the modern sportsman ; whilst the 

 hunter, in search of ivory, horn, bone, furs, or hides, wages a 

 ruthless war of extermination against them all. The " fur-seal " 

 and the " whale-fisheries '' are still pursued ; and though the pursuit 

 of the latter is now much diminished, the steady destruction of all 

 the Pinnipedia in both the northern and the southern hemisphere 

 continues with unabated ardour. 



I wish, very briefly, to draw your attention this evening io a 

 remarkable animal, now extinct, the Bliytina gigas (^:;=R}iytina 

 Stelleri), commonly known as " Steller's Sea-cow." 



This interesting species of marine phytophagous mammal, once 

 no doubt abundant along the shores of Kamtschatka, the Xurile 

 Islands, and Aliaska peninsula, but now entirely extinct, was first 

 discovered by the eminent German naturalist Steller J, who, in 

 company with Vitus Behriug, a captain in the Eussian I^avy 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 02)portunity ; 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 in Steller's 

 time it was limited. 



The bones of the Eliytina are not to 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 



jj, Zimmermann, 1780. t Desmarest, 1S19. 



\ " De Bestiis marinis, aiictore Georg. WilLelm. Stellero" &c. Mem. Acad. 

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



