Dampier, are much less than the other. Those of the higher parts of the Oronoque weigh only from five hundred to seven hundred and fifty pounds. They inhabit the rivers of Africa, from Senegal to the Cape; and those of South America also. They sometimes live in the sea, near the mouth of some great viver; into which they come once or twice in twenty four hours, for the sake of browzing on the marine plants which grow within their reach. They delight in brackish, or sweet water, rather than in salt, and in shallow water near low land, aud in places secure from surges and rapid tides. It is said that at times they frolic and leap to great heights out of the water. They are taken with a harpoon stuck in the end of a staff, which the Indians use with great dexterity. The Spaniards call them fish-cows.

The extraordinary history of a tame manate, preserved by a prince of Hispaniola, in a lake adjoining his residence, at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards, deserves to be mentioned. It was, on account of its general nature, called in the language of the country, matum. It would appear as soon as it was called by any of its familiars; for it hated the Spaniards, on account of an injury it had received from one of those adventurers. The fable of Arion was here realised. It would offer itself to the Indian favourites, and carry over the lake ten at a time, singing and playing upon its back. Matum at last, however, escaped to its native waters by means of a violent flood.

These animals are easily tamed, grow very fond of music, and are the dolphin tribe of the ancients.

The sea-ape is five feet long, with a head like a dog's; erect and sharp ears; large eyes; a sort of beard on both lips; body round, thickest near the head, tapering to the tail, which is bifurcated; the upper lobe the longest; body covered with thick hair, grey on the back and red on the belly. Mr. Steller, who first noticed it, could discover neither feet nor paws. It is full of frolic, plays a thousand monkey tricks; sometimes swimming on the side, sometimes on the other side of a ship, looking at it seemingly with great amazement. It will come so near the ship that it may be touched with a pole; but if any body stir, it immediately retires. It often rises one third of its body above the water, and stands erect for a considerable time: then suddenly darts under the ship, and appears in the same attitude on the other side; and repeats this for thirty times together. It frequently brings up a sea plant, not unlike the bottlegourd, which it tosses about and catches in its mouth, playing a thousand humour.

These seem, also, to be alluded to by the ancients

ous antics.

under the name of dolphins.

SECTION V.

[Shaw.

Mammoth.

Manis megatherium.-CUVIER.

THIS prodigious animal has a near resemblance to the elephant, but having never been found alive, nor even with its organs in a perfect state after death, we are not able to give its generic cha. racters very accurately. From some late accounts received from St. Petersburgh, it is supposed by some that the animal is still in existence, its carcase having been found nearly fresh, though it has never been seen actually alive. Its residence appears to have been confined to a line in the northern hemisphere, extending from Siberia to the banks of the Ohio; and the name of the mammoth was first given to the dug-up skeleton of the animal by Siberian peasants.

The following account, received from St. Petersburgh, is the fullest and most accurate that has hitherto been published; and relates to a specimen found, not indeed alive, but complete, in a state of nearly perfect preservation.

Schoumachoff, a Tungoose chief, about the end of August, 1799, when the fishing in the river Lena was over, repaired according to annual custom to the sea-side. Leaving his family in their huts, he coasted along the shore in quest of mammoth's tusks, and one day perceived in the midst of a rock of ice a large shapeless block, not at all resembling the logs of drift wood commonly found there. He climbed the rock, and examined it all round, but could not ascertain what it was. The next year visiting the same spot, he found the carcase of a sea-cow (trichecus rosmarus); and ob. served, not only that the mass he had seen the year before was freer from ice, but that there were two similar pieces by the side of it. These afterwards turned out to be the feet of the mammoth. In 1801, the side of the animal and one of its tusks appearing very distinctly, he acquainted his wife and some of his friends with what he had found. This, however, gave them great alarm, for the old men said, that they had been told by their fore

fathers, a similar monster was once before seen in those parts, and the whole family of the person who discovered it soon became extinct. At this Schoumachoff was so much alarmed that he fell sick. On his recovery, however, he could not relinquish the expectation of the profit he might make of the tusks; and directed his servants to conceal the circumstance carefully, and endeavour to keep away all strangers by some pretext or other. It was not till the fifth year, that the ice had melted sufficiently to disengage the mammoth, when it fell over on its side upon a bank of sand. Schoumachoff then cut off the tusks, which he bartered for goods to the value of 50 rubles (£. 11 5s.) with a Russian merchant. Being satisfied with this, the carcase was left to be devoured by the bears, wolves, and foxes, except what the Yakouts in the neighbourhood cut off to feed their dogs. Previous to this, indeed, he had a rude drawing made of it, which represents it with pointed ears, very small eyes, horse's hoofs, and a bristly mane extending along the whole of its back. In this it has the appearance of something between a pig and an elephant.

In 1806, Mr. Mich. Adams, of Petersburg, being at Yakoutsk, fortunately heard of this circumstance, and repaired to the spot. When he arrived there, the skeleton, nearly stripped of its flesh, was entire, one of the fore-feet excepted. The vertebræ, from the head to the os coccygis, one of the shoulderblades, the pelvis, and the remaining three extremities, were still held firmly together by the ligaments of the joints, and by strips of skin and flesh. The head was covered with a dry skin. One of the ears, well preserved, was furnished with a tuft of bristles. These parts could not avoid receiving some injury during their removal to Petersburg, a distance of 11000 wersts [6875 miles]: the eyes however are preserved, and the pupil of the left eye is still distinguishable. The tip of the under lip was eaten away; and the upper being destroyed, the teeth were exposed. The brain, which was still within the cranium, appeared dry. The parts least damaged were one of the fore-feet and one of the hind: these were still covered with skin, and had the sole attached to them.

According to the Tungoose chief, the animal was so corpulent and well fed, that its belly hung down below the knee joints. It was a male, with a long mane, but had neither tail nor trunk. From the structure of the os coccygis however, Mr. Adams is persuaded, that it had a short thick tail: and from the smallness

of its snout, and the size of its tusks, he conceives it could not have been able to feed without the assistance of a proboscis; but Schoumachoff persisted in the assertion, that he never saw any ap. pearance of a trunk, and it does not appear probable, that even his rude draftsman would have omitted such a striking feature. The skin, three-fourths of which are in possession of Mr. Adams, the part that lay on the ground having been preserved, was of a deep grey colour, and covered with reddish hair and black bristles. These, from the dampness of the ground, had lost some part of their elasticity. More than a poud [40lbs.] weight of them, that had been trodden into the ground by the bears, was collected, many of them an archine [2 feet 4 in.] long. What remained of the skin was so heavy, that ten persons found great difficulty in carrying it to the sea-side, in order to stretch it on logs of wood. The head weighs 11 pouds [460 lbs.]; the two horns, each of which is 1 toise [9 feet] long, weigh 10 pouds [400 lbs.]; and the entire animal measured 4 archines [10 feet] high, by 7 [16 feet] long. Mr. Adams has seen tusks of the mammoth so curved as to form three-fourths of a circle; and one at Yakoutsk 2 toises [15 feet 9 in.] long, an archine [2 feet 4 in.] thick near the root, and weighing 7 pouds [280 lbs.]. They are curved in the direction opposite to those of the elephant, bending towards the body of the animal; and the point is always more or less worn on the outerside, so that the right tusk is easily distinguishable from the left. He adds, that he found a great quantity of amber on the shores.

In America this animal, or one so nearly resembling it, as probably to be only a distinct species of the same genus, has only been found in a fossil state; and generally only particular parts or boues of the animal have been discovered in one place, though other parts have often been traced at no great distance. This has frequently occurred near the lakes of Canada, where the animal is called by the savages, the father of oxen; near the rivers which fall into the Ohio; towards the rivers Miami, Muskingum, in the state of Kentucky, and of Tennessee, &c. &c. but principally near the salt springs, where pieces of skeletons and tusks have been found, of an astonishing length and weight.

A femur and a tibia have been found, which, when united, must have been five feet and a half high; another femur, which was alone five feet long, and 36 inches in circumference in its middle or cylindrical part; ivory tusks resembling those of an elephant,

which were near seven feet long, and one foot six or eight inches in circumference at the base. Dr. Barton and Dr. Wislar, of Philadelphia, have in their possession the lower jaw almost entire, with two teeth on either side, in particular, that of the former has five and three points, all quite double; but no one had the entire head.

The state of New York (in the environs of the beautiful river Hudson) has of late years been the theatre of discoveries of the fossil bones, apparently of the same animal, a greater quantity of them having been found there than any where else. In 1800, by digging in the low and marshy places of the counties of Orange and Ulster, at three, four, and five feet deep, parts, which had never before been discovered, were found. Some bones, ten feet deep in the earth, were as sound and entire as those which had been met with nearer the surface. Some, however, were found broken, particularly those of the head.

In another place, eight miles from the city of New York, an upper jaw bone was found perforated to receive a tusk like that of an elephant; the connection of the tusks was by gomphosis; the tusks were evidently of ivory; the openings for the nostrils were eight inches in diameter; and notwithstanding that the bones of the feet afford reason to conclude that the animal had claws, it is scarcely possible to avoid thinking, from the structure of the head, that it was a species of elephant. Some hair has even been found, three inches in length and of a dark colour, which is said to have belonged to this monstrous quadruped, and seems very considerably to assimilate it to the mammoth of Siberia; though M. Cuvier inclines to believe that the two animals constituted different genera, the tusks of the Siberian animal exhibiting more of a genuine elephant or ivory structure, and less sharpness in its grinders.

In the year 1801, Mr. William Peale, proprietor of the museum at Philadelphia, succeeded in obtaining a skeleton so nearly complete, as by the addition of one or two defective bones, obtained from the fossile remains of other animals of the same kind, to render it perfect. This skeleton was brought over to England by the son of the discoverer, and publicly exhibited in 1803; the writer of the present article examined it minutely, and from actual measurement, and the information of the proprietor, is able to give the following detail. The skeleton was dug up in a morass in