GREAT IRISH HEER—STELLEHS SEA-COW. 249 
the destruction wrought by these whalers and fur-hunters that 
in 1754, only thirteen years after its discovery, the sea-cow had 
become practically exterminated. In 1768, according to the 
investigations of Dr. L. Stejneger of the U. S. National Museum, 
Washington, who has made a most careful study of the question, 
this large and important marine mammal became wholly extinct, 
the last individual ever seen alive having been killed in that year; 
and the fate which overtook Rhytina so speedily has almost 
become that of the buffalo, and will as certainly become that of 
the fur seal unless it be protected. 
It may interest the reader, especially if he be a traveller, to 
know that, besides the fine specimen of Rhytina in the Natural 
History Museum, already alluded to, good skeletons are pos- 
sessed by the Museums of St Petersburg, Helsingsfors (Finland), 
Stockholm, U. S. National Museum, Washington, as well as 
portions of skeletons by other museums. 
The Sirenians are an ancient race, for their remains have 
been found in Tertiary strata, of various ages, from Eocene to 
Pleistocene, over the greater part of Europe — in England, 
Holland, Belgium, France, Germany, Austria, and Italy ; also 
near Cairo. In the New World, fossil Sirenians have been found 
in South Carolina, New Jersey, and Jamaica, 
Another European species is the Halitherium, from the Miocene 
rocks of Hesse-Darmstadt, of which a cast may be seen in the 
Natural History Museum, South Kensington. Its length is 7 ft. 
8 in. The teeth in this form resembled those of the Dugong. 
The Rhytina was probably intermediate between the Dugong 
and the Manatee, judging from the casts of its brain-cavit)^ 
Its brain was very small considering the size of the animals. 
Altogether, as many as fourteen fossil genera and thirty species 
are known. Evidently, then, the old Sirenia were once a much 
more flourishing race. At present, they are confined exclusively 
to the tropical regions of the earth, and their past distribution, 
as revealed to the geologists, adds one more proof to the now 
