Upon the whole, M. de Condamine, who favoured us with a drawing, which he himself made of the manati in the Amazon river, speaks with greater precision than any other author on the natural habits of this animal. "Its flesh and fat (says he) have a great resemblance to veal. Father Acuna makes its resemblance to the ox still more complete, by giving it horns, which Nature never provided. It is not, properly speaking, amphibious, since it cannot entirely leave the water, having only two flat fins close to the head, about sixteen inches long, and which serve the animal instead of arms and hands. It only raises its head out of the water to feed on the herbage upon the shore. That of which I drew the figure was a female; it was about seven feet and a half long, and its greatest breadth two feet: I have since seen some much larger. The eyes of this animal have no proportion to the size of its body; the orifice of its ears is still less, and only seems like a hole made by a pin. The manati is not peculiar to the Amazon river, being not less common in the Oronooko. It is also found, though less frequently, in the Oyapoc, and many other rivers in the environs of Cayenne, and on the coast of Guiana, and probably in other parts."
This is nearly all the precise matter which we can collect respecting this animal. It were to be wished that the inhabitants of Cayenne, among whom there are several admirers of Natural History, would make some observations on this animal, and give us a description of its internal parts, especially those of respiration, digestion and generation. There seems, though we are not certain, to be a great bone in the genital member, and a foramen ovale in the heart; that its lungs are of a singular conformation; and that it has several stomachs, like ruminating animals.
To conclude: the species of the manati is not confined to the seas and rivers of the New World, but exists also in those of Africa. M. Adanson saw them at Senegal, whence he brought one of their heads, which he presented to me, and at the same time communicated the following description of this animal, which he made on the spot, and which I have thought it proper wholly to transcribe. “I saw many of these animals, the largest was not more than eight feet long, and weighed about eight hundred pounds. A female, which was five feet three inches long, weighed only one hundred and ninety-four pounds. They are of a dark ash colour, and have hairs scattered over their bodies, very long, and like bristles. The head is conical, and of a middling size, with respect to the bulk of the body. The eyes are round and very small; the iris is of a deep blue, and the pupil black. The muzzle is almost cylindrical; its cheeks are nearly of an equal breadth, and the lips are fleshy and very thick. The only teeth they have either in the upper or lower jaw are grinders. The tongue is of an oval form, and joined almost to the end of the lower jaw. It is remarkable that almost every author and traveller have described this animal with ears. I have not been able to perceive a hole sufficient even to admit a small probe. It has two arms, or fins, placed close to the head, which is not distinguishable from the rest of the body by any kind of neck, nor even any apparent shoulders. These arms are nearly cylindrical, composed of three articulations, the foremost of which is flat, and like the palm of the hand, the fingers of which are only to be distinguished by four claws of a bright brownish red colour; its tail is horizontal, like that of the whale, and is partly of the form of a baker’s shovel. The female has two breasts, rather elliptic than round, placed near the arm-pits. The skin is thin on the belly, thick on the back, but thickest of all on the head. The fat is white, and two or three inches thick; the flesh is of a pale red colour, and more delicate than veal. The lolof negroes call this animal lereou; it feeds on herbage, and is to be found at the mouth of the Black Sea.”
By this description we find that the manati of Senegal does not differ in any particular from that of Cayenne; and from a comparison made of the head of the Senegal manati with that of a fœtus of the Cayenne lamantin by M. Daubenton, he presumes that they are of the same species. The testimony of travellers also agrees with our opinion; Dampier in particular speaks positively, and his observations deserve a place in our history. “It is not only in Blewfield river, which springs between the rivers Nicaraga and Veraga, that I have seen the manati: I have also seen them in the Bay of Campeachy, on the coast of Bocca del Drago, and Bocca del Toro, in the river of Darien, and in the small southern islands of Cuba: I have heard it said that there are a few found on the north of Jamaica, and many in Surinam river, which is a very low country. I have likewise seen them at Mindanea, one of the Philippine islands, and on the coast of New Holland. This animal is fond of brackish water, therefore he most commonly inhabits those rivers which border on the sea. This is possibly the reason why we never meet with any in the South Seas, where the coast is generally high, and the water very deep near land, except in the Bay of Panama; but even there the manati is not to be met with; but the West-Indies being, as it were, a great bay composed of a number of small ones, are generally low land and shallow water, and consequently afford a food which is agreeable to the manati. They are sometimes seen in salt water, sometimes in fresh, but seldom very far from shore. Those which inhabit the sea, and places where there are no rivers that they can enter, come to the mouth of the nearest fresh-water rivers which they find, once or twice in twenty-four hours. They feed on a narrow herbage which grows on the sides of the shores, especially in places where the tides or currents are not very strong. They never go on shore, but always keep in a depth of water where they can swim. Their flesh is sweet, and very good food; their skin is also of great utility. The manati and the tortoise are commonly found in the same parts of the world, and feed on the same herbage.”[K]
[K] A great number of manatis are to be found along the low and marshy coasts, and in the vast lakes of Moyacaré, the most southern part of French Guiana, above the Oyapoc. Small vessels from Cayenne go to the fishery of these animals, and bring their flesh salted, a gross aliment which is kept for the negroes. This fishery, which might become an object of important commerce, should be encouraged; it would require a small establishment upon the coast, and would facilitate the means of acquiring some knowledge of a country now unknown, and which, at the same time that it opened new sources of commerce, would prove also an inexhaustible mine of wealth to Natural History.
IN the history of these animals we shall not follow the pedantic method of schools, which lays down arbitrary maxims as real, and falsities as truth; such documents are eagerly imbibed by children, but are judiciously rejected by men, if not founded on solid principles. We shall, therefore, to avoid such imaginary methodical distributions, which have been of no other use than to heap a multiplicity, and even distinct species, of animals into one indiscriminate mass.
What I call an Ape is an animal with a flat visage, and without a tail, whose teeth, fingers, nails, and hands, resemble those of the human species, and who also walks upright on its two feet. This definition, drawn from the nature of the animal, and its resemblance to man, will exclude every animal that has a tail, or a long snout, crooked or pointed claws, or whose nature obliges them to walk more willingly on four feet than on two. After this fixed and precise rule, let us examine to what animals the name of Ape can properly be applied. The ancients knew only one; the pithecos of the Greeks, and the simia of the Latins, is the real ape, and on which Aristotle, Pliny, and Galen, have instituted all their physical comparisons, and founded all their relations of the ape to mankind. But this ape of the ancients, which so greatly resembles man in its external form, and still more in its internal organization, nevertheless differs from him in an essential point, namely, magnitude. The size of the human species is generally above five feet, while that of the pithecos is seldom more than a fourth of that height. Therefore, if this animal had a still greater resemblance to the human species, the ancients would have had reason to regard it only as an homunculus, a dwarf, or a pigmy, capable only of attacking small animals, while man knew how to subdue the elephant, and even to conquer the lion.