174 MAMMALS

havea complete set of teeth, while all the living repre-
sentatives have mill-teeth.

One genus, Manatus, comprising the manatis, is
noteworthy from its three species having only six
vertebre in the neck instead of seven. This is the
genus with the rudimentary finger-nails. Another point
in which it differs from the only other living genus is
in its having a rounded tail instead of a deeply
notched one. The manatis are found in the rivers
flowing into the Atlantic on both the eastern and
western tropical shores, such as the Amazon and
Orinoco, the Niger and Senegal. They are about
eight feet long, and very awkward and sluggish in
their movements. Like the dugongs, they not only
use their flippers for holding up their young in the
water, but for putting food into their mouth.

The dugongs belong to the other genus of the order,
ffalicore, of which there are also three species, and
they haunt the shores of the Indian Ocean, the Red
Sea, and the coasts of Australia. Unlike the manatis,
they do not ascend the rivers, but graze at the sea
bottom in shallow water. It may be worth a note
that, according to Riippell, the Israelites were directed
to veil the tabernacle, not with badger-skins, as our
translation has it, but with skins of the Red Sea
dugong,

One of the Sirenians has recently gone the way
of the dodo and the great auk. In 1741, Bering,
the Danish discoverer of the straits that bear his
Russianised name, was shipwrecked on Copper Island
in those regions, and there discovered the Northern Sea
cow, Rhytina Stellert, so called after Steller, the natu-