THE MANATEE. 
345 
The next morning I rose long before day and 
proceeded to the place, intending to procure the skin 
for preservation. But when I arrived, the negro 
butcher had already killed the animal, and partly cut 
it up, so that my purpose was frustrated. I had the 
pleasure, however, of breakfasting on steaks of its 
flesh, which was of delicious flavour, without any 
oiliness: its taste was something between veal and 
pork, rather approaching the latter. The carcase 
was eagerly bought up in joints, as a delicacy for the 
table. 
I am well pleased to be able to add some further 
notes of this little known but very interesting aquatic 
Pachyderm. My excellent friend, Mr. Hill, WTiting 
under date of the 8th December, 1848, from Spanish 
Town, gives me the following account. 
In the month of August last some fishermen 
from Old Harbour brought up hither a Manati, which 
they succeeded in keeping alive several days by 
taking it early every morning to the river. I saw 
it immediately after they brought it into town. 
Its periodically long intervals of expiration and in- 
spiration, in which it opened out its otherwise closely- 
compressed nostrils, and snorted ; and its convulsive 
flappings of the tail, broad, stiff, and horizontal, 
like the spasmodic jerkings of a lobster, were all very 
marked incidents in its economy. The snout, long 
and cylindrical, with a very decided turgescence, so 
as to make the diameter of the root less than that 
of the middle ; — the exceedingly discal character 
of the extremity, with the remarkably shorn-like 
bristles about it, were very curious features, and 
