786 The American Naturalist. .  [September, 
The region from the Sebastian to the St. Lucie has, for a 
number of years, been the only part of the Indian River 
where the Manatee were seen. Here, besides the herd of 
eight, now reduced to three at the very outside, there were 
some solitary scattering individuals, how many it is impossi- 
ble to say, as the Manatee. has become very shy, but it is safe 
to assume that the scattering ones fared no better than did the 
herd, and that the reduction in numbers from the cold of last 
winter was very great. 
There are still, however, a few Manatee alive in the Sebas- 
tian River. - Ina letter I lately received from Mr. Gibson he 
told me that in the end of March he surprised several Mana- 
tee lying close together on a mud flat, high up the Sebastian 
River. As soon as they heard him they made arush for deep 
water, throwing the mud and water fifteen feet high in the 
violence of their flight. 
I made many careful inquiries among the people who 
live along the river and would be in the way of knowing of 
the Manatee and its diminution of numbers of late years, but 
got surprisingly little information of any value except from 
Mr. Gibson, to whom I have so often referred, and Mr. Fritz 
Ulrich, a German of more than ordinary intelligence, who has 
spent the last fifteen years dreaming his life away among the 
birds and animals of the Indian River. They were all his 
friends. The panthers knew his voice and answered him 
from the wilderness, and the owls came from their hiding 
places and flew about him to his call and the little lizards fed 
from his hand. But it is all gone now and there only re- 
mains of the great life of the river a small terrified remnant, 
and in its stead the railroad train hurries along the west bank 
and hideous towns and more hideous hotels and cottages have 
sprung up everywhere among the pines. It is now eight 
years since Mr. Ulrich saw a living Manatee, but when he 
first came to the river fifteen years ago they were still com- 
mon and he often saw them from the door of his little house 
at The Narrows passing up and down the river and occasionally 
he saw them at play when they would roll up, one behind the 
other, like the coils of a great sea serpent. 
