callosity as hard as a bone, with which he cuts the herbage; but that he has thirty-two grinders; that his sight is imperfect, on account of the smallness of his eyes, which have no iris and very little moisture; that he has an extremely small brain; but to remedy the defect of sight, he has a very quick ear; that he has no tongue; that the parts of generation are more like those of the human species than any other: that the milk of the female, which he asserts to have tasted, is very good; that they produce but one young at a time, which they embrace and hold with their hands; that the mother suckles it during a year, after which it is able to provide for itself: that this animal has fifty-two vertebræ; that it feeds like the turtle, but can neither walk nor crawl upon land. All these facts are very exact, and even that of the fifty-two vertebræ; for M. Daubenton in one he dissected found twenty-eight vertebræ in the tail, sixteen in the back, and six, or rather seven in the neck. This traveller is only deceived with respect to the tongue, which is not deficient in the manati, but affixed to the lower jaw almost to the extremity. In the Voyage to the American islands, printed at Paris, 1722, we meet with a tolerable good description of the manati, and the manner in which it is taken by the harpoon. The author perfectly agrees with all the principal facts we have already mentioned; but he observes, "that this animal is become very rare in the Antilles since the coasts have been inhabited; and that the one which he saw and measured, was fourteen feet nine inches, from the muzzle to the tail: his head was very thick, with a large mouth and lips, which were furnished with coarse hairs; his eyes small in proportion to his head; and he had only two holes in the sides instead of ears; his neck was very thick and short, and but for the wrinkles occasioned by his motions, it would be impossible to tell his head from his body. Some authors pretend (he adds) that this animal makes use of his hands, or fins, to crawl upon land: I particularly endeavoured to inform myself respecting this fact, but could not hear of any person who had seen him out of water; and indeed, it is impossible for him to walk or crawl, since its fore-feet, or hands, only serve the female to hold the young while they suckle. The female has two round breasts, which I measured; they were each seven inches in diameter, and about four in their elevation: the nipple was about an inch thick; the body was eight feet two inches in circumference; the tail was like a large battledore, about nineteen inches long, fifteen inches broad at the widest part, and about three inches thick at its extremity. The skin on the back was about double the thickness of an ox's hide, but much thinner on the belly; it was of a slate colour and of very coarse grain; the hairs, or bristles, were of the same colour as the skin, thinly scattered, but very thick, and long.