PARKER' — THE FLORIDA MANATEE 
133 
over an hour, they were shorter having been interrrupted by the unex- 
pected resumption of swimming on the part of one or more of the 
manatees. Under such circumstances breathing became very much 
more rapid and the animals moved over the surface of the water in 
such a way that it was impossible to record accurately their respiratory 
activities. These incomplete records in so far as they appertain to 
resting animals show, however, nothing that is not to be seen in the 
complete records except a maximum period of submergence. In one 
instance among these incomplete sets the female is recorded as having 
remained under water 16 minutes and 20 seconds. This is the longest 
period for a manatee to be under water of which I have a record and 
exceeds the maxima in table 1 by over a minute. Aside from this the 
incomplete sets contain nothing of special interest. 
It has been stated by some observers that the sea-cows are nocturnal 
in their habits, but the three animals that came under my observation 
showed no evidence of this. I often visited at night the pool in which 
they were kept and I never noticed at that time any greater activity 
in it than I did during the day time. In the darkness of night it was 
much more difficult to observe the manatees than in the day, but the 
large female could be commonly identified in the dim light of night 
and I have a number of sets of records of her breathing rate at that 
time. In obtaining these records I usually placed myself on the edge 
of the pool as close as possible to her head and listened for her breathing 
as she came to the surface reading the time from a watch kept near 
at hand and lighted by a flash-light so held as not to illuminate the 
pool. In this way I found that she was acting much as she did in the 
daytime and that her submergence or resting periods averaged about 
12 minutes. In listening for her breathing I held my face as near the 
surface of the water as the edge of the pool would permit and on her 
first emergence she often blew her breath directly in my face. It was 
far from aromatic, as described by Drexler and Freund (1906, p. 80) 
for the dugong, but had a most repulsive smell resembling somewhat 
that of phosphorus. This may have been due to the fact that she 
with the other two in the pool were fed regularly on cabbage. 
The periods of submergence for manatees recorded in this paper 
agree fairly well with those already contained in the literature. These 
older records were not very systematically gathered and most of them 
are of the nature of incidental notes rather than extended statements. 
The resting or submergence period for American manatees are given 
by the authors quoted as follows: Chapman (1875, p. 461) about 1 to 
