FISHES IN ZOOLOGICAL MYTHOLOGY. 25 



suggests to Trinculo making a fortune out of Caliban, 

 whom he has mistaken for a sea-creature. " Were I in 

 England now, and had but this fish painted, not a holiday- 

 fool there but would give a piece of silver : there would 

 this monster make a man ; any strange beast there makes 

 a man." We still have the monk-fish, and though the 

 face might pass for a malignant travesty of the human 

 countenance, there are none of the monkish habiliments 

 which made the old-world monster so attractive to the 

 peep-show public. Indeed, the other name of the monk is 

 the " angel-fish," from the wing-like fins that spread out on 

 either side its demoniacal countenance. 



Still later, and coming down to England itself, three 

 centuries ago we find popular ichthyology still largely con- 

 cerned with non-existent forms, as the following from the 

 work of Lawrens Andrewe, on "the fishes moste knowen," 

 will show : — The eel is of no sex ; the Ahuna, when " in 

 peryl of dethe be other fisshes," makes himself as round as 

 a bowl and puts his head in his belly and eats a bit of 

 himself, " rather than the other fisshes sholde ete him hole 

 and all." The balaena, a large merwoman, puts her young 

 in her mouth in rough weather ; the cray-fish eats oysters 

 by waiting till the mollusc opens its shells, and then 

 throwing stones in to prevent it shutting up again ; the 

 caucius is most difficult to net, because when it sees 

 the meshes settling on it, it sticks its head in the mud 

 and the net slips over the tail ; the whale is caught 

 by ships coming round it with bands and amusing it with 

 music till it is speared ; the phoca kills its wife when 

 it is tired of her, and gets another ; the halata has the 

 power of taking her young out before they are born, and 

 putting them back again ; the pike is begotten by the west 

 wind ; the musculus is the herald of balaena, but the orchun 



