Page:Natural History (1848).djvu/137

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MANATEES.
127


per pound. About the middle of the last century it fetched at Port Royal, in Jamaica, fifteen- pence (currency) per pound.

The Manatee is captured by means of the harpoon. At St. Domingo, the hunters approached them in a small boat, and struck them with a harpoon attached to a stout cord. The wounded animal made violent efforts to escape, but its ‘movements were impeded, as well as revealed, by means of a buoy of cork or similar material fastened to the end of the line. At length, the animal exhausted with its efforts, was towed to the shore, and there killed. The sport was considered as peculiarly diverting, though not unat- tended with danger from the capsizing of the boat in the struggles of the Manatee in the shoals.

Specimens of this species have been cast on the shores of the British Isles; but they were dead, and in an advanced stage of decomposition.

An enormous extinct animal (Dznotherium), known as yet exclusively by its skull, seems to have been intermediate between the aquatic and the terrestrial Pachydermata. The incisors of the lower jaw form two immense tusks, with their roots encased in enormous sockets, which project downward and backward, in the same manner as those proceeding from the upper jaw of the Morse. The size and situation of the nasal orifice have led to the presumption that it was furnished with a proboscis; and Professor Kaup conjectures its general appearance to have re- sembled the accompanying representation. Dr. Buckland considers it as nearly allied to the Tapirs, but still more aquatic, inhabiting freshwater lakes and rivers. ‘To an animal of