Eccentricities of the Animal Creation.

by John Timbs

In reviewing these stories of Mermaids, it may be remarked that there is always a fish in each tale—either a living fish of a peculiar kind, which a fanciful person thinks to bear some resemblance in the upper part to a human being, or a fish which becomes marvellous in the progress of its description from mouth to mouth. It is commonly thought the seals may often have been mistaken for Mermaids. But, of all the animals of the whale tribe that which approaches the nearest in form to man is, undoubtedly, the Dugong, which, when its head and breast are raised above the water, and its pectoral fins, resembling hands, are visible, might easily be taken by superstitious seamen for a semi-human being, or a Mermaid. Of this deception a remarkable instance occurred in 1826. The skeleton of a Mermaid, as it was called, was brought to Portsmouth, which had been shot in the vicinity of the Island of Mombass. This was submitted to the members of the Philosophical Society, when it proved to be the skeleton of a Dugong. To those who came to the examination with preconceived notions of a fabulous Mermaid, it presented, as it lay on the lecture-table, a singular appearance. It was about six feet long; the lower portion, with its broad tail-like extremity, suggested the idea of a powerful fish-like termination, whilst the fore-legs presented to the unskilful eye a resemblance to the bones of a small female arm; the cranium, however, had a brutal form, which could never have borne the lineaments of "the human face divine."

The Mermaid has been traced to the Manatee as well as to the Dugong: the former is an aquatic animal, externally resembling a whale, and named from its flipper, resembling the human hand, manus. Again, the mammæ (teats) of the Manatees and Dugongs are pectoral; and this conformation, joined to the adroit use of their flippers (whose five fingers can easily be distinguished through the inverting membranes, four of them being terminated by nails) in progression, nursing their young, &c., have caused them, when seen at a distance with the anterior part of their body out of the water, to be taken for some creature approaching to human shape so nearly (especially as their middle is thick set with hair, giving somewhat of the effect of human hair or a beard), that there can be little doubt that not a few of the tales of Mermen and Mermaids have had their origin with these animals as well as with seals and walruses. Thus the Portuguese and Spaniards give the Manatee a denomination which signifies Woman-fish; and the Dutch call the Dugong Baardanetjee, or Little-bearded Man. A very little imagination and a memory for only the marvellous portion of the appearance sufficed, doubtless, to complete the metamorphosis of this half woman or man, half fish, into a Siren, a Mermaid, or a Merman; and the wild recital of the voyager was treasured up by writers who, as Cuvier well observes, have displayed more learning than judgment.

The comb and the toilet-glass have already been incidentally mentioned as accessories in these Mermaid stories; and these, with the origin of the creature. Sir George Head thus ingeniously attempts to explain:—"The resemblance of the seal, or sea-calf, to the calf consists only in the voice, and the voice of the calf is certainly not dissimilar to that of a man. But the claws of the seal, as well as the hand, are like a lady's back-hair comb; wherefore, altogether, supposing the resplendence of sea-water streaming down its polished neck, on a sunshiny day, the substitute for a looking-glass, we arrive at once at the fabulous history of the marine maiden or Mermaid, and the appendages of her toilet."

The progress of zoological science has long since destroyed the belief in the existence of the Mermaid. If its upper structure be human, with lungs resembling our own, how could such a creature live and breathe at the bottom of the sea, where it is stated to be? for our most expert divers are unable to stay under water more than half an hour. Suppose it to be of the cetaceous class, it could only remain under the water two or three minutes together without rising to the surface to take breath; and if this were the case with the Mermaid, would it not be oftener seen?

Half a century has scarcely elapsed since a manufactured Mermaid was shown in London with all the confidence of its being a natural creature. In the winter of 1822 there was exhibited at the Egyptian Hall, in Piccadilly, this pretended Mermaid, which was visited by from 300 to 400 persons daily! The imposture, however, was too gross to last long; and it was ascertained to be the dried skin of the head and shoulders of a monkey attached very neatly to the dried skin of a fish of the salmon kind with the head cut off; the compound figure being stuffed and highly varnished, the better to deceive the eye. This grotesque object was taken by a Dutch vessel from on board a native Malacca boat; and from the reverence shown to it by the sailors it is supposed to have represented the incarnation of one of the idol gods of the Malacca Islands. A correspondent of the "Magazine of Natural History," 1829, however, avers that the above "Mermaid" was brought from the East Indies; for being at St. Helena in 1813 he saw it on board the ship which was bringing it to England. The impression on his mind was that it was an artificial compound of the upper part of a small ape with the lower half of a fish; and by aid of a powerful glass he ascertained the point of union between the two parts. He was somewhat staggered to find that this was so neatly effected that the precise line of junction was not satisfactorily apparent: the creature was then in its best state of preservation.

In a volume of "Manners and Customs of the Japanese," published in 1841, we, however, find the following version of the history of the above Mermaid:—"A Japanese fisherman seems to have displayed ingenuity for the mere purpose of making money by his countrymen's passion for everything odd and strange. He contrived to unite the upper half of a monkey to the lower half of a fish so neatly as to defy ordinary inspection. He then gave out that he had caught the creature in his net, but that it had died shortly after being taken out of the water; and he derived considerable pecuniary profit from his cunning in more ways than one. The exhibition of the sea monster to Japanese curiosity paid well; yet more productive was the assertion that the half-human fish, having spoken during the five minutes it existed out of its native element, had predicted a certain number of years of wonderful fertility and a fatal epidemic, the only remedy for which would be the possession of the marine prophet's likeness! The sale of these pictured Mermaids was immense. Either the composite animal, or another, the offspring of the success of the first, was sold to the Dutch factory and transmitted to Batavia, where it fell into the hands of a speculating American, who brought it to Europe; and here, in the year 1822-3, exhibited his purchase as a real Mermaid to the admiration of the ignorant, the perplexity of the learned, and the filling of his own purse."

The Editor of the "Literary Gazette," Mr. Jerdan, was the first to expose the fabulous creature of the Egyptian Hall. He plainly said:—"Our opinion is fixed that it is a composition; a most ingenious one, we grant, but still nothing beyond the admirably put-together members of various animals. The extraordinary skill of the Chinese and Japanese in executing such deceptions is notorious, and we have no doubt that the Mermaid is a manufacture from the Indian Sea, where it has been pretended it was caught. We are not of those who because they happen not to have had direct proof of the existence of any extraordinary natural phenomenon, push scepticism to the extreme and deny its possibility. The depths of the sea, in all probability, from various chemical and philosophical causes, contain animals unknown to its surface-waters, rarely if ever seen by human eye. But when a creature is presented to us having no other organization but that which is suitable to a medium always open to our observation, it in the first instance excites suspicion that only one individual of the species should be discovered and obtained. When knowledge was more limited, the stories of Mermaids seen in distant quarters might be credited by the many, and not entirely disbelieved by the few; but now, when European and especially British commerce fills every corner of the earth with men of observation and science, the unique becomes the incredible, and we receive with far greater doubt the apparition of such anomalies as the present. It is curious that though medical men seem in general to regard the creature as a possible production of nature, no naturalist of any ability credits it after five minutes' observation! This may, perhaps, be accounted for by their acquaintance with the parts of distinct animals, of which it appears the Mermaid is composed. The cheeks of the blue-faced ape, the canine teeth, the simia upper body, and the tail of the fish, are all familiar to them in less complex combinations, and they pronounce at once that the whole is an imposture. And such is our settled conviction." Though naturalists and journalists fully exposed the imposture, this did not affect the exhibition, which for a considerable time continued as crowded as ever; but the notoriety had dwindled down to "a penny show," at Bartholomew Fair, by the year 1825.

After so many exposures of the absurd belief in Mermaids, it could scarcely be expected that any person could be found in Europe weak enough to report the existence of one of these creatures to an eminent scientific Society. Yet, on the 22d of June, 1840, the first Secretary of the Ottoman Embassy at Paris addressed a note to the Academy of Sciences, stating that his father, who was in the Admiralty department at Constantinople, had recently seen a Mermaid while crossing the Bosphorus, which communication was received with much laughter.