24^ WHALE-TAILED TRICHECHUS. 
time to time^ perch on their backs, in order to 
pick the insects which they find upon them. 
They continue in the Kamtschatkan and Ame- 
rican seas the whole year; but in winter they are 
very lean, so that one may count their ribs. They 
are taken by harpoons fastened to a strong cord ; 
and after they are struck, it requires the force of 
thirty men to draw then on shore. Sometimes, 
when they are transfixed , they will lay hold of the 
rocks with their paws, and stick so fast as to leave 
the skin behind before they can be forced off. 
When a Manati is struck, its companions swim 
to its assistance; some will attempt to overturn 
the boat, by getting under it; others will press 
down the rope, in order to break it; and others 
will strike at the harpoon with their tails, with a 
view of getting it out, which they often succeed 
in. They have no voice, but make a noise, by 
hard breathing, like the snorting of a horse. 
They are of an enormous size : some are twenty- 
eight feet long, and eight thousand pounds weight ; 
but, if the Mindanao species be the same with 
this, it decreases in size as it advances southward, 
for the largest which Dampier saw there weighed 
only six hundred pounds. The head, in proportion 
to the bulk of the animal, is small, oblong, and 
almost square: the nostrils are filled with short 
bristles : the gape or rictus is small : the lips are 
double: near the junction of the two jaws the 
mouth, is full of white tubular bristles, which serve 
the same purpose as the laminte in Whales— to 
prevent the food from running out with the 
