A TROPIC GARDEN 235 
‘manatee, and occasionally to scratch themselves 
when leeches irritate. The, courtship of sea- 
cows, the qualities which appeal most to their 
dull minds, the way they protect the callow 
youngsters from voracious crocodiles, how or 
where they sleep—of all this we are ignorant. 
We belong to the same class, but the line be- 
tween water and air is a no man’s land which 
neither of us can pass for more than a few sec- 
onds. 
When their big black hulks heaved slowly up- 
ward, it brought to my mind the huge glistening 
backs of elephants bathing in Indian streams; 
and this resemblance is not wholly fantastic. 
Not far from the oldest Egyptian ruins, excava- 
tions have brought to light ruins millions of 
years more ancient—the fossil bones of great 
creatures as strange as any that live in the realm 
of fairyland or fiction. Among them was re- 
vealed the ancestry of elephants, which was also 
that of manatees. Far back in geological times 
the tapir-like Moeritherium, which wandered 
through Eocene swamps, had within itself the 
prophecy of two diverse lines. One would gain 
great tusks and a long, mobile trunk and live its 
life in distant tropical jungles; and another 
