March 13, 1909-] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
413 
Captive Sea Cow and ’Gator. 
City Point, (Indian River), Fla., March 6.— 
Editor Forest and Stream: “Come and see the 
wonderful sea cow and champion alligator. Ad¬ 
mission 25 cents.” 
A handsomely lettered board nailed high on 
a palmetto tree on the shore of the Indian River 
carries this invitation. It stands in front of the 
beautiful trucking garden, owned and worked 
by my neighbor and friend, S. Hendry. Thread¬ 
ing a path through this tropical garden you reach 
two wooden vats or tanks holding two interest¬ 
ing captive natives of Florida. Mr. Hendry, 
though now only a middle aged man, has seen 
the fauna of this weird land in its prime; has 
seen it steadily diminish; is seeing the species, 
of which his two show animals are splendid 
specimens, approaching extermination. What he 
has seen no man will ever see again. 
No wonder hundreds of people visit his beau¬ 
tiful garden to see this “cow” and “ ’gator” in 
their primitive land and element. I send you 
a photograph of both and hope you may be able 
to reproduce them. 
“Jumbo,” the manatee, or sea cow, was cap¬ 
tured by Mr. Hendry under a permit from the 
county commissioners in the Indian River, three 
hundred yards from where it is now confined. 
He is eight feet long, his girth is at least eight 
feet, and Mr. Hendry thinks he will weigh 1,300 
pounds. His shape suggests the present marine 
torpedo. The propelling power and rudder is 
the tail, shaped very much like a palmetto fan. 
The stroke for straight propelling is a vertical 
one and the tail lies flat when inactive. The 
fore limbs are flexible flattened oval paddles, 
placed rather low on" the side of the body, and 
seem to be used more to rise and sink in the 
water than for other locomotion. The ending 
of these limbs is curiously like the human hand, 
without fingers, although on each there are three 
horny excrescences, resembling toe nails. It is 
said that this resemblance to human hands 
caused the Spaniards to coin the name 
“manatee.”* The head is of moderate size, of 
no pronounced shape, and the nose is split up 
somewhat like a hare’s, and can open and 
close water tight. It has no front teeth, but 
the somewhat prehensile lips are furnished with 
warty protuberances to grasp food. It has 
jaw teeth. The eyes are very small, but there 
are no visible ears. However, it has a most 
acute sense of hearing, for when approached 
or its name called, it rises and takes food from 
the hand of any one, although it comes much 
most quickly to the call of Mr. Hendry. 
Naturalists say it eats only aquatic plants, and 
in its native element it must be confined to these, 
but Mr. Hendry feeds his on banana leaves and 
on the sea grass and moss which he gathers 
from the shore of the river. 
I am told that in the unprecedented cold of 
December, 1894 , to February, 1895 , these cows were 
well nigh exterminated in Florida. Mr. Hen¬ 
dry’s cow is covered thinly with a bristly hair, 
and the color of this and the skin is a dark 
bluish or slate. It is said they are much prized 
for their skins, oil and flesh, and being easily 
captured are sure to be exterminated. Here at 
this writing I have no access to any books on 
zoology, but my recollection is these animals are 
*This is more commonly believed to be derived from 
‘he animal in one of the West India 
said to be found now in limited numbers along 
the Atlantic coast of Florida, the rivers of 
Brazil, West Indies and the opposite coast of 
Africa. 
Some writers say the size of this animal is 
greatly exaggerated, that there is no trustworthy 
evidence of its attaining a greater length than 
eight or nine feet. I do not believe this, for 
Mr. Hendry captured another at the same time 
he did his present specimen, which died. This 
he says was much larger than “Jumbo.” The 
manatee is represented as very slothful and in¬ 
ert. They do have this appearance when not 
excited, but those who know them tell me there 
is no aquatic creature—not even the shark— 
which can equal them in speed when excited. I 
believe this to be true, for they are absolutely 
without means of defense or offensive attack 
and must rely on flight, otherwise they could 
not exist. 
“Ben,” the ’gator, is eleven feet long and was 
MR. Hendry’s manatee and alligator. 
the semi-pet of a resident of Merrill’s Island, a 
few miles from Mr. Hendry’s, where he has had 
his “cave” and is known to have lived for many 
years. Ben is just plain ’gator, only this and 
nothing more. He can swell up, let off steam 
like a locomotive, blow and bellow, look ugly 
and scare children and dogs out of their senses. 
His chief distinction lies in the fact that he 
is known to have caught and devoured a valu¬ 
able pointer dog belonging to a man in the 
vicinity. 
When I first began hunting in Florida twenty 
years ago, alligators were very common; so 
much so that in pursuit of deer I would ride 
or walk around them, no more thinking to shoot 
one than I would a pine knot. I am a Vir¬ 
ginian and mournfully confess that many in¬ 
teresting wild creatures of the South are doomed 
to extinction. Samuel Cecil Graham. 
Our Disappearing Mammals. 
A MASS meeting was held in Louisville, Ky., 
at the Free Public Library, Feb. 22 , to organize 
an Institute of Arts and Sciences. At this 
meeting Brent Altsheler delivered an address 
on the importance of a knowledge of our mam¬ 
mals. He said in substance; 
No country nor State deserves more to have 
a representative collection of mammals than 
does Kentucky. In pre-historic, and even in 
historic times, no land was richer in species 
and numbers of large and interesting game ani¬ 
mals than was Kentucky, At the present time 
no country has less large indigenous animal 
life. Almost within one hundred years, Ken¬ 
tucky has been turned from a natural paradise 
of game animals into a land almost deserted 
by them. With no appreciation of the beauties 
of nature and tbe value of game animals, man 
has recklessly exterminated them. Of.the great 
game animals which our ancestors found 
luxuriating in the famous pastures and forests 
of this fertile upland country, only one—the 
white-tailed deer—has representatives in two or 
three remote mountain counties. The wild 
buffalo is extinct in the United States, and the 
wapiti, or elk, is driven far beyond the valley 
of the Mississippi. 
Not only have we lost these valuable and 
interesting animals, but we have no museum 
for the exhibition of specimens of them for 
the pleasure and instruction of the public. The 
mus'eum has its line of Instruction as well de¬ 
fined as that of the school and library, and one 
of the most important lessons it teaches is the 
love of nature and the appreciation of our 
natural resources. In each progressive museum 
is to be found the North American mammal 
gallery, where may be seen representatives of 
the great families of cervidse, bovidse and 
ursidse—deer, ox and bear. The naturalist, 
with the taxidermist’s aid, takes specimens of 
male, female and young of the American elk, 
for example, mounts and groups them with 
natural and appropriate accessories or sur¬ 
roundings in a large glass case. Here they are 
indefinitely preserved as an exhibit, as instruc¬ 
tive as the living specimen. 
The mammals of Kentucky—especially the 
bones of extinct species—have made notable 
additions to the great museums of the world. 
But at home, so far as my knowledge extends, 
not one specimen remains. Kentucky was once 
the southern limit of the musk-ox, an odd and 
most interesting mixture of the prominent 
characteristics of the buffalo and the sheep. 
Its range has now receded almost to the Arctic 
Circle, and lies wholly within British America 
and Greenland. 
The museum should have on exhibition a 
representative collection of mammals, especi¬ 
ally those originally found in this State, includ¬ 
ing the fossils of the giant beasts unearthed 
near the salt-licks and elsewhere. They should 
be correctly mounted, properly named, classi¬ 
fied, described and illustrated, so as to be of 
greatest value to students of natural history 
and to stimulate a love of outdoor life. 
What We Forget. 
Belated flocks of wild duck on migratory 
passage South drop in the middle of the Hud¬ 
son off Washington Heights these winter days 
and feed amid the ice floes, says the Post. To 
the occupants of the apartment houses on the 
drive they are objects of great interest and 
much speculation goes on as to their variety. 
“They are brown gulls,” a man was over¬ 
heard to tell his friend, coming down town in a 
subway train the other morning. “I read all 
about them in my daughter’s natural history 
last night. It’s funny how much we forget as 
we grow older,, isn’t it?” 
