In their aquatic habits, their fishlike form, their
smooth bodies, gradually tapering and terminating
in a broad horizontal fin, their total want of pos-
terior limbs, and the contraction of the anterior
into flippers or swimming paws, the resemblance
to the last named animals is very manifest. But
the resemblance is almost confined to external
characters; the whole internal structure, as Pro-
fessor Owen has shewn, differing very widely from
that of the carnivorous Cetacea; so that, to use
the words of this. eminent physiologist, ‘‘ the
amount of variation is as great as well could be in
animals of the same class, existing in the same
great deep. The junction of the Dugongs and
the Manatees with the true Whales cannot there-
fore be admitted in a distribution of animals ac-
cording to their organization. With much super-
ficial resemblance, they have little real or organic
resemblance to the Walrus, [with which they
were associated by Linnzeus,|] which exhibits an
extreme modification of the amphibous carnivorous type. I conclude, therefore, that the
Dugong and its congeners must either form a
group apart, or be joined, as in the classification
of M. de Blainville, with the Pachyderms, with
which they have the nearest affinities, and to
which they seem to have been more immediately
linked by the now lost genus Dinotherium.”
The food of the Manatide consists of sea-weeds, the grass of rivers, and other aquatic herbage: for the digestion of which they are furnished with a stomach divided into several sacs. ‘They have no canine teeth: the molars are compound or semi- compound, with plain or furrowed crowns: the genus Rytina has no molars, but their place is
