346 
HAITI. 
never properly represented but in your exquisite 
little sketches of the Westmoreland specimen. 
“ This Manati was a female about ten feet long. 
It had become sufficiently familiar to grunt in answer 
to its name, Bessy. After exhausting curiosity here, 
the fishermen took it on to Kingston by railway ; 
but its exposure to the midday sun in its journey so 
exhausted it, that if it did not die of fatigue, they 
found themselves necessitated, for fear it would, — 
at once to slaughter it, that they might keep it 
marketable at the shambles. It was readily bought 
up, and spoken of, as deliciously tasted meat.” 
In a previous letter my friend had communicated 
some notes of a Manatee that had fallen under his 
observation, during a sojourn in Eastern Haiti. “ On 
the sands, which throw back the waters of the Yasica 
at its embouchure, and spread them out into a wind- 
ing lakelet, a Manati that had been wounded up the 
river, had come and died. That was the first animal 
of the kind I had seen. In body it is shaped like 
the Seal ; — but its face has a character decidedly 
cow-like. It is very obviously the ultimate link of 
the fluviatile pachydermata with the cetacea. Its 
fore legs are shapeless, being neither claws nor fins. 
Placed near the head so as very inefficiently to assist 
the motion of its great bulk on land, it was rather 
surprising to see that it had crept so completely out 
of the water as to lie dry upon the beach. Its eyes 
are small, and the orifices which form its ear-holes 
are narrow slits, scarcely perceptible. It has breasts 
like those of a woman, placed forward between the 
paws, and projecting with the swelling rotundity of a 
