Steller’s Sea-Cow.[80]
[80] For fuller information, see the Geological Magazine, decade iii. vol. ii. p. 412. Paper by Dr. Henry Woodward, F.R.S.
The Sirenia of the present day form a remarkable group of aquatic herbivorous animals, really quite distinct from the Cetacea (whales and dolphins), although sometimes erroneously classed with them. In the former group are the Dugong and the Manatee. These creatures pass their whole life in the water, inhabiting the shallow bogs, estuaries, and lagoons, and large rivers, but never venturing far away from the shore. They browse beneath the surface on aquatic plants, as the terrestrial herbivorous mammals feed upon the green pastures on land.
Not a few of the tales of mermen and mermaids owe their origin to these creatures, as well as to seals, and even walruses. The Portuguese and Spaniards give the Manatee a name signifying “Woman-fish,” and the Dutch call the Dugong the “Little Bearded Man.” A very little imagination, and a memory only for the marvellous, doubtless sufficed to complete the metamorphosis of the half-woman, or man, half-fish, into a siren, a mermaid, or a merman. Hence the general name Sirenia.
The Manatee (Manatus) inhabits the west coast and rivers of tropical Africa, and the east coast and rivers of tropical America, the West Indies, and Florida.
The Dugong (Halicore) extends along the Red Sea coasts, the shores of India, and the adjacent islands, and goes as far as the northern and eastern coasts of Australia.
Fig. 58.—Skeleton of Rhytina gigas (Steller’s “Sea-Cow”), from a peat deposit, Behring’s Island.
The most remarkable Sirenian is the Rhytina gigas, or “Steller’s Sea-Cow.” Early in 1885 the trustees of the British Museum acquired a nearly complete skeleton of this animal, now extinct, from peat deposits in Behring’s Island, of Pleistocene age. Formerly it was abundant along the shores of Kamtchatka, the Kurile Islands, and Alaska. It was first discovered by the German naturalist, Steller, who, in company with Vitus Behring, a captain in the Russian Navy and a celebrated navigator of the northern seas, was with his vessel and crew cast away upon Behring’s Island (where Behring died) in 1741. Steller’s original description is preserved in the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences St. Petersburg. He saw it alive during his long enforced residence on the island. In the course of forty years, 1742-1782, it appears to have been exterminated, probably for the sake of its flesh and hide, around both Behring’s Island and Copper Island, to the shores of which it was, in Steller’s time, limited.