254 AKTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book II. 



above, even if he had not been a Bidiop and a Father of thd 

 Church, I cannot difcover. 



I will conclude this account with one other variety, and that more 

 extraordinary than any I have hitherto mentioned. But neither is 

 it deftitute of antient authority ; fo that I may apply here what 

 Solomon has faid, * That there is nothing new under the fun ;' 

 which, indeed, may be applied to all my philofophy, and all the 

 faifls I have advanced to fupport it. The variety I mean is that of 

 fea-men and fea-women, commonly called Mermaids, The ac- 

 count I am to give of them is taken from a Dutch book, which is 

 very rare, and not tranflated, as far as I know, either into French 

 or Engliih ; and therefoie I will give it in the words of the author, 

 who is one Valentyn, minifter of the gofpel in Amboyna and Banda. 

 He lived in the beginning of this century, and has written a natural 

 hiftory of India, which I am told is the beft extant. A friend of 

 mine, who has favoured me with a tranflation of the pafTages from 

 it that follow, afTures me that the author was a man efteemed by the 

 Butch of Batavia (among whom my friend lived for feveral years) 

 to be a man of perfed veracity, and, from what he has colled:ed con- 

 cerning the Mermaid, appears to have been a man of learning, and 

 of great curiofity and induftry. 



In his Third Volume, which treats of Amboyna, and the iflands 

 in its neighbourhood, he fays, ' It feems very certain, that, in for- 



* mer times. Mermaids have been feen here. 



* In the Company's Daily Regifter for the year 1653, t^^^re is in- 



* ferted. That Lieutenant Trans Male or Smallen faw, at the time - 

 ' he was fent with fome men on an expedition in the Bay of Houn- 



* delo, as did all the people that were with him, in clear day-time, 

 ' two Mermaids, the one greater, the other fmaller, which they took 



^ to be man and wife, fwimming together : That the hair of their 

 ' head hung over the neck, and that it appeared between a greea 



* and 



