A TAME MANATEE. 
347 
bosom. A mass of thick flesh forms its lips. It has 
molar teeth with square crowns and transverse pro- 
jections, but no incisors, those of the jaw sufficing 
to crush the aquatic grasses, and the shore herbs on 
which it feeds. 
‘‘ With locomotive powers little suited to enable it 
to seek the land, as the Seal does, the Manati is 
almost exclusively an inhabitant of the water. It 
seldom does more to relieve itself from this element, 
than raising its head above the stream. It coasts 
the green banks, and crops the bordering herbage as 
it swims along. The friend, at whose home on the 
Yasica I was staying, when I saw this specimen of 
the Manati, informed me that some time previous 
to my coming on this visit, he had surprised some 
six of these tenants of the river in an inlet which he 
used as a timber dock. He confined them there 
until they had cropped all the long aquatic weeds 
that lined the bottom of the inlet ; and they grazed 
harmlessly and seemed to suffer no apprehension 
from their state of restraint. I tasted the flesh some 
years ago ; — it was like beef : the fat was crisp and 
delicate. Its vegetable food might reasonably be ex- 
pected to give it this similarity to the flesh of animals 
that graze the field. Purchas, in his ‘ Pilgrims,’ 
gives an interesting account of a Manati, which one 
of the Caciques of Hispaniola had tamed ‘ in a lake,’ 
as he expresses it, ‘ of standing water,’ giving this 
narrative of the ‘River Cow’ on the authority of 
Peter Martyr.”* 
* This anecdote, though not resting on scientific authority, is worth 
transcribing. The picture was probably drawn from the life ; and 
