XV.] 
ACCOUNTS OF THE SEA-COW, 
275 
In 1772 Dmitri Bragin wintered on Behring Island during 
a hunting voyage. In a journal kept at the request of Pallas, the 
large marine animals occurring on the island are enumerated, but 
not a word is said about the sea-cow (Pallas, Neue nordisclie 
Beytrdge, ii. p. 310). 
ScHELECHOV passed the winter 1783-84 on Behring Island, 
hut during the whole time he only succeeded in killing some 
white foxes, and in the narrative of the voyage there is not a 
word about the sea-cow (Grigori Schelechov russischen 
Kaufmanns erste und zweite Reise, &c., St. Petersburg, 1793). 
Some further accounts of the sea-cow have been obtained 
through the mining engineer Pet. Jakovlev, who visited 
Commanders Islands in 1755 in order to investigate the 
occurrence of copper on Copper Island. In the account of this 
voyage which he gave to Pallas there is not indeed one word 
about the sea-cow, but in 1867 Pekarski published in the 
Memoirs of the Petersburg Academy some extracts from 
Jakovlev’s journal, from which it appears that the sea-cow 
already in his time was driven away from Copper Island. 
Jakovlev on this account on the 27th November, 1755, laid a 
petition before the authorities on Kamchatka, for having the 
hunting of the sea-cow placed under restraint of law and the 
extermination of the animal thus prevented, a thoughtful act 
honourable to its author, which certainly ought to serve as a 
pattern in our times (J, Fr. Brandt, Symholce Sirenologicm, M6m. 
de VAcad. de St. P4tershou')'‘g, t. xii. No. 1, 1861-68, p. 295). 
In his account of Behring’s voyage (1785-94) published in 
1802, Sauer says, p. 181 : ‘‘ Sea-co^vs were very common on 
Kamchatka and the Aleutian Islands,^ when they were first 
^ The sea-cow does not appear to have ever occurred on the Aleutian 
Islands; on the other hand, according* to Steller, dead sea-cows have 
sometimes been cast ashore on Kamchatka, where they even obtained from 
the Russians a peculiar name hapustnihy derived from the large quantity 
of sea-weed found in their stomach. It appears to me that this name, 
specially distinctive of a graminivorous animal, appears to indicate that on 
T 2 
