vii. THE MERMAID. 107 



whales, walruses, and the seal tribe, this blubber forms a 

 thick warm layer of fat just beneath the skin, and for this 

 there were " fisheries" at .the Cape and in Australia. The 

 oil derived from the fat is said to be remarkably pure and 

 sweet, and to be nicer and more efficacious than cod-liver 

 oil. The flesh of young mermaids is also reported to be 

 particularly good eating ; and Jack at sea vastly prefers it 

 to salt junk. 



It was a fatal day for certain mermaids of the Northern 

 Pacific when a practical naturalist, named Steller, found 

 out that they were eminently palatable. A palatable 

 mermaid was a doomed creature. Steller sailed with 

 Behring in the middle of the last century. Off the coast 

 of Kamschatka, round an island, which bears Behring's 

 name, they found a great number of large, stupid, tame 

 creatures which they called northern sea cows. They had 

 small heads with bristly snouts ; rugged, gnarled hides ; 

 short, stumpy flippers, and a black, crescentic, fringed tail. 

 Teeth there were none ; but horny plates took their place, 

 and with them these uncouth mermaids contentedly 

 munched the seaweed around Behring's Island. For 

 centuries they had disported themselves there and con- 

 tentedly munched the seaweed. But Steller came and 

 proclaimed that they were good for eating. This was their 

 only and fatal virtue. In twenty-seven years, or there- 

 abouts, they were practically exterminated digested by 

 seamen and natives. 



The mermaid of myth is no more. The siren of science 

 seems doomed to extinction at no distant date. Go there- 

 fore, ere it be too late, 1 and pay your respects to the living 

 mermaid at the Zoo. 



1 Alas ! It is now too late. The mermaid died soon after these lines 

 were written and first printed. 



