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Do you mean to tell me that stone-age Egyptians had longer noses than ordinary men?" "Of course not! It's just that the Martians very naturally cast their paintings in Martianized form. Don't human beings tend to relate everything to themselves? That's why dugongs and manatees started the mermaid myths sailors thought they saw human features on the beasts.
Could the sounds have proceeded from the throat of some of these human-like denizens of the deep, known as dugongs, lamantins, manatees, and the like? It was strangest of all that William had heard the voice of a girl: for the lad still adhered to the belief that he had done so.
The fishes fitted it up at once as a twin-propeller, with results so satisfactory that the whale and the porpoise, coming long after, adopted the invention. And be it noted that these last and their kin are now the only ocean-going mammals in the world. The whole tribe of paddle-steamers, such as seals and walruses and dugongs, are only coasters.
Similar totemic clan functions appear in the islands of Torres Straits, the Turtle and Dugong clans performing ceremonies to increase the supply of turtles and to attract dugongs. The tribes just mentioned are those in which the social organization is definitely totemistic. In New Guinea the totemic character of the performances appears to be doubtful.
Let no anti-Darwinian study young orang-outangs if he wishes to retain his present notions. The museum, Mr. Hornaday is advised, is now short of dugongs, and he is off for Australia next steamer to lay in a supply. The recital of his adventures is extremely interesting, and I predict that some day a book from him will have a great run.
At many such places, distinguished by large cairns* of stones, bones of turtle, dugongs, etc., watch is kept during the season, and, when a turtle is perceived drifting past with the tide, the canoe is manned and sent in chase.
That the rites, of which the "singing" is an essential part, have now become magical and are used and understood to be practised purely to promote the supply of dugongs and other articles of food, may be freely admitted; but it is unsafe to infer that the purpose with which the rites continue to be practised is the whole of the purpose with which they were originally performed.
The resemblance in the shape of the body and in the fin-like anterior limbs between dugongs and whales, and between these two orders of mammals and fishes, are analogical. These latter resemblances may be accounted for, as it seems to me, by adaptation for similarly active movements through thickets and herbage, together with concealment from enemies.
During our absence a few natives had made their appearance on the beach, attending some fires, it seemed, on a hunting excursion. Several grampuses were seen at the anchorage, also many dugongs and turtles. In the evening the Beagle was standing across the Gulf towards Bountiful Islands.
The Sirenia, so called by reason of their fanciful resemblance to the sirens of mythology, among which are the sea-cows, manatees, dugongs, etc., which are fish-like in structure and appearance, the fore-limbs being shaped like paddles, or fins, and the hind-limbs being absent or rudimentary;
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