THE ELEPHANT, 
269 
food. The neck is slightly indicated; the two nostrils are 
situated at the upper part of the snout^ and the lips are 
beset with stiff bristles, while the mammae are situated 
between the fore legs. The latter are of moderate length, 
with five well developed digits, but still fin-like and bent 
at the elbows. The brain is narrow compared with that of 
Cetaceans, and the heart is deeply fissured between the 
ventricles. The manatees of America (Fig. 305) and the 
dugongof Australia and India (Fig. 306) li ve in the mouths 
of large rivers, feeding on sea- weeds and aquatic plants or 
the grass along the shore. The Floridan manatee {Ma7ia- 
tus Americaiius) grows to a length of from two to nearly 
three metres (6-14 feet). It ranges from Florida to the 
Amazons, where it is called Vacca mari7ia; it ascends that 
river as far as Pebas, Peru, and is killed and eaten, its 
flesh resembling beef. Steller's manatee {Rliytina Stelleri) 
was in the last century found in abnndance on the shores 
of Behring's Island on the coast of Kamtchatka. Twenty- 
seven years afterwards (in 1768) it was totally exterminated 
by the sailors who visited that locality, and only a few im- 
perfect skeletons now exist in the museums of St. Peters- 
burg and Stockholm. This is the largest Sirenian known: 
it was over six metres (about twenty feet) in length. It 
differed remarkably from the other forms in having no 
teeth, but was provided with a very large, horny, palatine 
plate, and a corresponding one covering the enlarged point 
of union (symphysis) of the lower jaws. In the Tertinry 
Period a fossil Sirenian {Halitlierium) inhabited the shoi-es 
of western Europe. 
In the structure of the skull, the nature of their teeth, 
and their herbivorous habits the Sirenians in a degree con- 
nect the Cetaceans with the Ungulates. 
Order 7. Proioscidia. — Only two representatives of this 
group are now in existence, the Asiatic and African ele- 
phant, a number of other forms having become extinct. 
The group is well circumscribed, when we consider the 
living species, but in the early (Eocene) Tertiary Period 
