[125]These are all, of course, excessive exaggerations.
[126]Hardouin remarks, that the Basques of his day were in the habit of fencing their gardens with the ribs of the whale, which sometimes exceeded twenty feet in length; and Cuvier says, that at the present time, the jaw-bone of the whale is used in Norway for the purpose of making beams or posts for buildings.
[127]Hardouin, with excessive credulity, says that it is no fable, that the nereids and tritons had a human face; and says that no less than fifteen instances, ancient and modern, had been adduced, in proof that such was the fact. He says that this was the belief of Scaliger, and quotes the book of Aldrovandus on Monsters. But, as Cuvier remarks, it is impossible to explain these stories of nereids and tritons, on any other grounds than the fraudulent pretences of those who have exhibited them, or asserted that they have seen them. “It was only last year,” he says, “that all London was resorting to see a wonderful sight in what is commonly called a mermaid. I myself had the opportunity of examining a very similar object: it was the body of a child, in the mouth of which they had introduced the jaws of a sparus, or ‘gilt-head,’ while for the legs was substituted the body of a lizard.” “The body of the London mermaid,” he says, “was that of an ape, and a fish attached to it supplied the place of the hind legs.”
[128]In his description of the dolphin Pliny has confused the peculiarities of the seal, the porpoise, the flying-fish and the squalus, with those of the dolphin.
[129]He implies that the dolphin knows that it is “simus,” or “flat-nosed,” for which reason it is particularly fond of being called “Simo,” or “flat-nose,” a piece of good taste and intelligence remarkable even in a dolphin.
[130]Ovid tells the story of Arion more fully, and in beautiful language, in the Fasti, B. ii. l. 92.
[131]According to Cuvier the fore-feet were here taken for horns, being in the turtle long, narrow, and pointed.
[132]“Fremitu.” From their lowing noise, the French have also called these animals “veaux de mer,” and we call them “sea-calves.” Lopez de Gomara, one of the more recent writers on Mexico, in his day, gave an account of an Indian sea-calf, or manati, as it was called by the natives, that had become quite tame, and answered readily to its name; and although not very large, it was able to bear ten men on its back. He also tells us of a much more extraordinary one, which Aldrovandus says he himself had seen at Bologna, which would give a cheer for the Christian princes when asked, but would refuse to do so for the Turks.
[133]There are specimens of about 6000 kinds of fishes, in the Cabinet du Roi in Paris.
[134]He means, that in consequence of the lucrative nature of this fishery, it thence obtained the name of the “golden” horn.