14 SEA FABLES EXPLAINED. 



creatures of so strange and monstrous a kind that it would 

 be impossible exactly to explain their appearance without 

 the aid of a skilfully drawn picture : these have elongated 

 and coiled tails, and, for feet, have claws * or fins. And I 

 hear that in the same sea there are great amphibious 

 beasts which are gregarious, and live on grain, and by night 

 feed on the corn crops and grass, and are also very fond of 

 the ripe fruit of the palms. To obtain these they encircle 

 in their embrace the trees which are young and flexible, 

 and, shaking them violently, enjoy the fruit which they thus 

 cause to fall. When morning dawns they return to the 

 sea, and plunge beneath the waves." 



^lian seems to have derived this information from 

 Megasthenes, already referred to ; but in another chapter,! 

 he writes with greater certainty concerning these semi-human 

 whales, and claims divine authority for his belief in the exist- 

 ence of tritons. " Although," he says, " we have no rational 

 explanation nor absolute proof of that which fishermen are 

 said to be able to affirm concerning the form of the tritons, 

 we have the sworn testimony of many persons that there are 

 in the sea cetaceans which from the head down to the middle 

 of the body resemble the human species. Demostratus, 

 in his works on fishing, says that an aged triton was seen 

 near the town of Tanagra, in Boeotia, which was like the 

 drawings and pictures of tritons, but its features were so 

 obscured by age, and it disappeared so quickly, that its true 

 character was not easily perceptible. But on the spot 

 where it had rested on the shore were found some rough 

 and very hard scales which had become detached from it. 

 A certain senator — one of those selected by lot to carry on 



* '■'■ Forfices^'' literally "shears," or "nippers," like the claws of a 

 lobster. 



t Lib. xiii. cap. xxi. 



