1895. Florida Manatee, In the Indian River Waters. 185 
These Manatee were two of the survivors of the herd of 
eight, which had, for the past year, been living in the St. 
Lucie and Sebastian Rivers and that part of the Indian River 
which is between these two. For two years the Manatee has 
been protected by a State Law and this herd had come to- 
gether in consequence and probably consisted of most of the 
Manatee of this region that, freed from persecution, had col- 
lected into a herd as was their wont in old times when the 
rivers were theirs. 
‘Mr. Gibson told me that often he has stood on the railroad 
bridge that spans the Sebastian, and seen this herd pass under 
him and counted them over and over again and knew every 
individual init. After the first “freeze” of last winter, in 
December, three of the Manatee were found ashore, dead, in 
different places and no live ones were seen. Whether any of 
this herd pulled through both “ freezes ” is impossible to say 
but five out of the eight are accounted for and it seems likely 
that more died than were found, as a great part of their range 
was not covered and their carcasses might easily have escaped 
detection even in places that were visited. It does not take 
long for a dead body to disappear in Florida and the Manatee 
as they lay half under water would soon have been disposed 
of, the crabs doing the business below the surface and the tur- 
key buzzards above. 
The Manatee is extremely sensitive to a change in the 
temperature of the water. This was noticed by Mr. Conklin 
to be the case with the one that was kept alive in the Zoologi- 
cal Park in New York and Mr. C. J. Maynard told me that 
he knew of three large Manatee that were killed in the 
“freeze” of 1886 and washed up near Palm Beach. The 
1886 “ freeze ” was very mild compared with those of last win- 
ter. In 1886 the mangroves hardly suffered at all, while last 
winter, 1894 and 1895, nearly every tree along the whole 
stretch of the Indian River was killed to the ground. 
In both “freezes” last winter the cold came without any 
warning and the -change of temperature was so sudden that 
the only chance for the Manatee to escape certain death lay in 
their being able to reach deep water before they were over- 
come by the cold. 
