An Extraordinary Specimen.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 379, 22 June 1889, Page 4

An Extraordinary Specimen.

A London paper informs us that the Easter holiday visitors to the " Zoo " had the opportunity of interviewing the latest if not the most distinguished of scrangerß arriving in London. This is the Manatee, as grotesque a beast, , perhaps, as exists in the whole range of the Mammalia and the first, except one, of its kind ever seen alive among us. The Manatee lodges at present in a large warm water tank of the reptile house, opposite the snapping turtle, and consumes three dozen lettuces a day, or their equivalent in green stuff. It eats always under water, using its fore paws like, hands, but cornea up occasionally after the fashion of a Benli to take in a supply of air. Shaped like a fish, with the habits of a cetacean, and yet grazing on the river weeds like a sheep, this new creature is certainly one of the oddest of Nature's freaks — yet geologically most interesting withal, for he and the Dugong .of the Indian Ocean are the only surviving representatives — now the Rhytina or Sea Cow is exterminated — of the primeval Sirenia, abundant in the Pleisfco cene.