truncated tail; the others are round. There is however a variety of the
lamantin (_Manitus Senigalensis_, Desm.) which has a round tail, and is
distinguished as the "round-tailed manitus." (Ancient Monuments, p.
252.) The suggestion thus thrown out means, if it means anything, that
the sculpture exhibiting a flat tail is the only one referable to the
manatee of Florida and southward, the _M. Americanus_, while those with
round tails are to be identified with the so-called "Round-tailed
Lamantin," the _M. Senegalensis_, which lives in the rivers of
Senegambia and along the coast of Western Africa. It is to be regretted
that the above authors did not go further and explain the manner in
which they suppose the Mound-Builders became acquainted with an animal
inhabiting the West African coast. Elastic as has proved to be the
thread upon which hangs the migration theory, it would seem to be hardly
capable of bearing the strain required for it to reach from the
Mississippi Valley to Africa.

Had the authors been better acquainted with the anatomy of the manatees
the above suggestion would never have been made, since the tails of the
two forms are, so far as known, almost exactly alike. A rounded tail is,
in fact, the first requisite of the genus _Manatus_, to which both the
manatees alluded to belong, in distinction from the forked tail of the
genus _Halicore_.

Whether the tails of the sculptured manatees be round or flat matters
little, however, since they bear no resemblance to manatee tails, either
of the round or flat tailed varieties, or, for that matter, to tails of
any sort. In many of the animal carvings the head alone engaged the
sculptor's attention, the body and members being omitted entirely, or
else roughly blocked out; as, for instance, in the case of the squirrel
given above, in which the hind parts are simply rounded off into