3b SEA FABLES EXPLAINED. 



merry maid that eye could behold, and she was twisting 

 about her long hair, and dressing it, just like one of our 

 girls getting ready for her sweetheart on the Sabbath-day. 

 The old man made sure he should greep hold of her before 

 ever she found him out, and he had got so near that a 

 couple of paces more and he would have caught her by the 

 hair, as sure as tithe or tax, when, lo and behold, she looked 

 back and glimpsed him ! So, in one moment she dived 

 head-foremost off the rock, and then tumbled herself topsy- 

 turvy about in the water, and cast a look at my poor father, 

 and grinned like a seal.' " And a seal it probably was that 

 Tony's " poor father " saw. 



What, then, are these mermaids and mermen, a belief in 

 whose existence has prevailed in all ages, and amongst all 

 the nations of the earth } Have they, really, some of the 

 parts and proportions of man, or do they belong to another 

 order of mammals on which credulity and inaccurate 

 observation have bestowed a false character ? 



Mr. Swainson, a naturalist of deserved eminence, has 

 maintained on purely scientific grounds, that there must exist 

 a marine animal uniting the general form of a fish wdth that 

 of a man ; that by the laws of Nature the natatorial type 

 of the Quadnima/ia is most assuredly wanting, and that, 

 apart from man, a being connecting the seals with the 

 monkeys is required to complete the circle of quadrumanous 

 animals.* 



Mr. Gossef argues that all the characters which Mr. 

 Swainson selects as marking the natatorial type of animals 

 belong to man, and that he being, in his savage state, a great 

 swimmer, is the true aquatic primate, which Mr. Swainson 

 regards as absent. Mr. Gosse admits, however, that " nature 



* ' Geography and Distribution of Animals.' 

 t ' Romance of Natural History,' 2nd Series. 



