CHAPTER XX 

 THE MYTHOLOGY OF FISHES 



HE Mermaid. A word may be said of the fishes 

 which have no existence in fact and yet appear in 

 popular literature or in superstition. 



The mermaid, half woman and half fish, has been one 

 of the most tenacious among these, and the manufacture of 

 their dried bodies from the head, shoulders, and ribs of a 

 monkey sealed to the body of a fish has long been a profitable 

 industry in the Orient. The sea-lion, the dugong, and other 

 marine mammals have been mistaken for mermaids, for their 

 faces seen at a distance and their movements at rest are not 

 inhuman, and their limbs and movements in the water are 

 fishlike. 



In China, small mermaids are very often made and sold to 

 the curious. The head and torso of a monkey are fastened 

 ingeniously to the body and tail of a fish. It is said that Lin- 

 naeus was once forced to leave a town in Holland for question- 

 ing the genuineness of one of these mermaids, the property of 

 some high official. These monsters are still manufactured for 

 the "curio-trade." 



The Monk-fish. Many strange fishes were described in the 

 Middle Ages, the interest usually centering in some supposed 

 relation of their appearance with the affairs of men. Some of 

 these find their way into Rondelet's excellent book, "Histoire 

 Entiere des Poissons," in 1558. Two of these with the accom- 

 panying plate of one we here reproduce. Other myths less 

 interesting grew out of careless, misprinted, or confused ac- 

 counts on the part of naturalists and travelers. 



" In our times in Norway a sea-monster has been taken after 

 a great storm, to which all that saw it at once gave the name of 



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