This, however, matters very little to them, for their home is the sea. True, they may often be seen lying asleep on sandbanks or on rocks jutting out of the water, but they rarely venture far up the land, always remaining where they can slip back into their true home at the least alarm. So they live in the seas almost all over the world. They may be known from the higher seals chiefly by their want of outer ears, their backward-turned legs, and their feet with both the great and little toes larger than the inner ones; but their life is much the same. Some live near our own shores, especially in Scotland; some are peculiar to Australia and New Zealand; others crowd the icy seas of Greenland, sleeping in large herds on the ice-fields, where the polar bear makes them his prey; while others again live on the pack ice round the South Pole, the huge Elephant seal, with its long tapir-like nose, basking on the shores of Kerguelen’s Land and the islands of the southern seas--a monster twelve feet or more long, with his smaller wives beside him. * * * * * Thus the seals are bold ocean lovers, feeding entirely on animal food, and finding plenty of it in the wide sea as they roam. But there is another family of warm-blooded animals, pure vegetable-feeders, which also must have found their way in distant ages into the water; for they too are milk-givers, and though they have lost their hind legs, have still the front legs with all their proper bones, with the hands turned into flippers. These animals are the curious sea-cows or Manatees, which wander under water along the east coast of Africa and west coast of South America, feeding in the bays and often up the rivers, on the seaweeds and water-plants of all kinds; while another kind with tusks, called the Dugong, feeds all along the shores of the Indian Ocean and Australia. It is strange that while every child knows something about seals, very few people have heard of these gentle grazing manatees and dugongs, the only large vegetable-feeders of the sea. Yet they are curious, interesting animals, and seem to be the forms which have given rise to the popular stories of mermaids,[185] for they suckle their young ones at the breast, clasping them with their flippers, and when they raise their heads in the water have something the appearance of an uncouth mother nursing her child. [Illustration: Fig. 83. The Manatee or Sea Cow grazing.]