human wind from childhood to man's estate, at first a 

 credibility to all the stories told us, which once firmly im- 

 printed on our memory, as we grow older shape and re- 

 shape themselves, until finally analogies are traced between 

 the nursery tale and what is really a true historical narrative. 

 Much in the same manner have the ancient traditions about 

 mermaids been handed down from generation to generation^ 

 till at last natural historians have established the exist- 

 ence of animals whose physical appearance and general 

 habits easily accounted for the fictitious narratives regarding 

 creatures, believed to possess the attributes of human beings 

 and fish. While patiently waiting, therefore, a telegram from 

 the mermaids themselves, per the recently and successfully 

 laid sub-atlantic wires — (for as Punch gave forth in one of his 

 droll cartoons last year, these folks were very busy in this 

 submarine undertaking) —we shall proceed to anticipate 

 their communication, by a genial account or summary, of 

 what naturalists know regarding some of the tribe." 

 Notwithstanding the number of travellers and seafaring 

 persons who for centuries have been visiting distant regions, 

 it is only in comparatively recent times that a fair know- 

 ledge of the structure and position in the scale of beings 

 of these quondam mermaids has been obtained ; even now 

 their affinities with different groups of animals is a subject 

 which occasionally provokes fresh discussion among 

 naturalists. Probably one of the best examples of mermaids 

 is that which represents them in the human female form, 

 the posterior part being composed of a fish's tail, and as 

 such they were mentioned by many of the old writers. 

 Pliny, in his natural history of Fishes, devotes a chapter 

 to " The forms of the Tritons and Nereids." He says that 

 word was brought to the Emperor Tiberius that a Triton 

 had been both seen and heard in a certain cavern, blowing a 

 conch shell, and of the form under which they are usually 

 represented. Nor yet is the figure attributed to the 

 mermaids at all a fiction ; only in them the portion of the 

 body that resembles the human figure is still rough all over 

 with scales. For one of these creatures was seen upon the 

 waves, and as it died, its plaintive murmurs were heard 



