Mb. W. Keddie on the Early History and Proceedings of the Society. 107 



Encyclopaedia, where the writer of an article on mermaids and mermen 

 says it remained in sight for an hour. " Nothing except the face was 

 at first visible; and as the sea ran high, the creature sank gently under 

 the waves and then re-appeared. The head was very round ; the hair 

 thick and long, of a green oil cast, and it appeared troublesome when 

 thrown over the creature's face by the waves. As they receded, it 

 removed its hair with both its hands, which, as well as the ai'ms and 

 fingers, were very long and slender. The last were not webbed. The 

 forehead, nose, and chin were white, and the whole side face of a bright 

 pink colour ; the throat was also white, slender, and smooth ; and the 

 smoothness of the skin, on which neither hair nor scales were observed, 

 particularly attracted attention. The face seemed plump and round ; 

 the eyes of a light gray colour, were small, as also the nose. The mouth 

 was lai-ge ; and from the jaw-bone, which was straight, the face was 

 apparently short. One of the arms was frequently extended over the 

 head of the animal, as if to frighten a bird, which, hovering about it, 

 seemed to distress it much. When this had no effect, the creature 

 turned round several times successively." Such is evidently the descrip- 

 tion furnished by the minister's daughter, which had found its way into 

 the newspapers. The schoolmaster referred to in the correspondence 

 was Mr. Munro, Thurso, who hkewise publicly affirmed that in 1797, 

 twelve years before the circumstance now narrated, he observed a figure 

 like a female sitting on a rock projecting into the sea, at Sandside Head, 

 in the parish of Rcay. " Its head was covered with long thick Hght 

 brown hair, flowing down on the shoulders. The forehead was round, 

 the face plump, and the cheeks ruddy; the mouth and hps resembled 

 those of a human being, and the eyes were blue. This creature was 

 apparently in the act of combing its hair with its fingers, which seemed 

 to afford it pleasure ; and it remained thus occupied during some minutes, 

 when it dropped into the sea." The writer in the Encyclopculia cautions 

 his readers against allowing the extreme rarity of the mermaid to militate 

 against the belief in its existence. Naturalists, he remarks, scarcely 

 believed during late years in the giraffe and hippopotamus ; they still 

 debate concerning the unicorn and the mammoth, and resolutely denied 

 that such a creature lived as the great sea serpent, " until one was cast 

 up by the waves on our own island!" The animal supposed to have 

 set at rest the question as to the existence of the great sea serpent, was 

 a huge fish, cast ashore on the island of Stronsa, in 1808, measuring 

 fifty-five feet in length, with a mane extending thirty-nine feet from the 

 uliouldcr to near the caudal extremity. This fish was described by Dr. 

 Harcliiy in the Memoirs of the Wernerian Society; and several of its 

 vertebrae are still to be seen in the Museum of Natural History in the 



