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The Pekan is a larger species, belonging to North America, and semi-aquatic in its habits; while the Vison, or Mink, is a large black weasel that inhabits the borders of rivers in Canada and the United States, where it preys upon fish and aquatic reptiles.
In the northeastern part of our own country we may look for no fewer than eight species of turtles which are semi-aquatic, living in or near ponds and streams, while another, the well-known box tortoise, confines its travels to the uplands and woods. There are altogether about two hundred different kinds of turtles, and they live in all except the very cold countries of the world.
The igarapes and furos or channels, which are infinite in number in this great river delta, are characteristic of the country. The land is everywhere covered with impenetrable forests; the houses and villages are all on the waterside, and nearly all communication is by water. This semi-aquatic life of the people is one of the most interesting features of the country.
How the members of the seal tribe have changed in their descent from purely terrestrial ancestors is partly explained by such intermediate animals as the otter. This form is adapted by its slender body and partly webbed feet to a semi-aquatic life; it seems to have halted at a point beyond which all of the seals have passed in their evolution.
While he has torn the thin glebe which confined the light earth of extensive plains, and has destroyed the fringe of semi-aquatic plants which skirted the coast and checked the drifting of the sea sand, he has failed to prevent the spreading of the dunes by clothing them with artificially propagated vegetation.
If in a series of evolving generations the line of modification proceeding from a terrestrial animal like a cat to semi-aquatic and marine types substantially like an otter and a seal should be carried further, it will inevitably lead to forms possessing characters such as those displayed by whales and the related porpoises, dolphins, and narwhals of the order cetacea.
From the semi-aquatic summer-house with roof curving upward like an inverted umbrella, imprinted upon a favorite tea-plate, we often sallied forth in fancy to explore the Chinese world as portrayed in blue or pink upon earthen table-ware of the olden time. And what a world!
By two or three weeks of exploration they seem to have gained a clear idea of this rich semi-aquatic region. Ribaut describes it as "a countrie full of hauens riuers and Ilands of such fruitfulnes, as cannot with tongue be expressed." Slowly moving northward, they named each river, or inlet supposed to be a river, after the streams of France, the Loire, the Charente, the Garonne, the Gironde.
The nesting-site was on a low swampy piece of ground grown over with a semi-aquatic plant called durasmillo in the vernacular.
It may be affirmed that generally, in the "cypress swamps" of the Mississippi, no sediment mingles with the vegetable matter accumulated there from the decay of trees and semi-aquatic plants.
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