28 FISHES OF FANCY. 



terrestrial and marine animals, and their counterparts 

 are to be found in the folk-lore* of every coast-dwelling 

 people at the present day. I will only notice here the 

 Scylla-myth. Her form is very variously described, but 

 the most familiar acceptation is that which combines the 

 woman, dog, and fish. She gives her name to the dread- 

 ful Scyllidae of science, one of which, the black-mouthed 

 dog-fish, is known to Italian fishermen as the " Bocca 

 d' Inferno " 



" As a shark and dogfish wait 



Under an Atlantic isle 

 For the negro-ship whose freight 

 Is the theme of their debate, 



Wrinkling their red gills the while." 



Yet they eat it, and its even more appalling relative, the 

 Rough Hound converting these terrors of the sea into a 

 very palatable soup. 



With the growth of knowledge and the extension of 

 navigation, the Hellenic monstrosities, themselves the re- 

 production of still more ancient myths, became gradually 

 discredited ; but travellers, and those who lived by catering 

 to the human love of the marvellous, were not behindhand 

 in replacing them with others better suited to contemporary 

 taste and sentiment. Among the more impossible mon- 

 strosities that the Middle Ages possessed, the sea-bishop, 

 that had a shark's head, crocodile's claws, and goat's legs, 

 deserved all the eminence it attained ; while, not far behind 

 it, came the monk-fish, a tolerably good caricature of a 

 friar, constructed by the showmen of the day out of portions 

 of different fish, but nevertheless as thoroughly believed in 

 by the fair-frequenting public as any pig-faced lady of 

 modern times. This credulity as to "fish-like monsters" 



* See Chapter VII. 



