Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo16amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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SEA COWS, PAST AND PRESENT 317 vessels was none too easy a matter and salt beef was especially difficult to pro- cure; so when tlie rytina was found and proved to be most excellent beef, the fur traders stopped at Bering Island on their way to our Northwest Coast to lay in a store of salt rytina. Unhappily the supply of rytinas was limited, owing to the limited mnnber of proper feeding grounds, and so before many years the animal was eaten out of existence. Dr. Leonhard Stejneger, who passed two years on Bering Island, during which time he gathered many valuable tom of the old cartographers, decorated his chart of Kamtchatka with figures of the sea lion, fur seal, and rytina. But for this we should be in doubt as to the tail fin of the animal, since Steller's description is far from clear; also we might wonder if Steller was correct in saying that there were no finger bones in the paddle, since other members of the family have them. Scientifically, the sea cows are inter- esting because they afford one of the instance-; where a theoretical ancestor has duly materialized. All aquatic mam-
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The great Arclio sea cow or rytina (see right of picture) discovered by Bering in 1741, was the largest member oC the sea cow family, and once abundant about Bering and Copper islands off the coast of Kamtchatka. It is now extinct, having been hunted for its flesh which resembled beef. Our only figures of the animal are these on the chart of Kamtchatka made by Lieutenant Waxell of Bering's party. The creature is said to have been so helpless that it was rolled about by the surf and banged against the shore, and its hide — no doubt for protection — resembled bark and was so thick that it was hewn off with axes sea cow skeletons, estimates that at best there could not have been more than two thousand individuals. For our knowledge of the rytina and its habits, we are indebted to Steller, the surgeon of Bering's party, an en- thusiastic naturalist, who in the midst of starvation, disease, and death, care- fully studied and recorded the habits of the animaLs of Bering Island. Our only figures of this extinct animal are those made by Lieutenant Wa.xell, of Bering's party, who, following the cus- mals, seals, sea cows, and whales, are believed to be descended from four- footed, land-dwelling forms, whose re- mains are imbedded somewhere in the rocks. So far none of these hypotheti- cal beasts has come to light and the palreontologist is compelled to fall back on the "imperfection of the palseonto- logic record." The fact is we really know little of what lies buried in the rocky tombs of the past, and not only have we no continuous record of the life of other days, but also only rarely

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