220 SEA FABLES EXPLAINED. 



be suggested that they were influenced by their fears, for the mermaid 

 is not an object of terror to fishermen ; it is rather a welcome guest, 

 and danger is apprehended from its experiencing bad treatment." 



Mr. Edmonston concludes by saying that 



" The usual resources of scepticism that the seals and other sea- 

 animals appearing under certain circumstances, operating upon an 

 excited imagination, and so producing ocular illusion, cannot avail 

 here. It is quite impossible that six Shetland fishermen could commit 

 such a mistake." 



It would seem that the narrator demands that his readers 

 shall be silenced, if unconvinced ; but 



" He that complies against his will 

 Is of his own opinion still." 



This incident is well-attested, and merits respectful and 

 careful consideration. If Mr. Edmonston himself had seen 

 the animal, his evidence would have been still more im- 

 portant ; but I decline to admit any such impossibility of 

 error in observation or description on the part of the 

 fishermen, or the further impossibility of recognising in the 

 animal captured by them one known to naturalists. The 

 particulars given in this instance, and also of the supposed 

 merman seen cast ashore dead in 1719 by the Rev. Peter 

 Angel (p. 210), are sufficiently accurate descriptions of a 

 warm-blooded marine animal, with which the Shetlanders, 

 and probably Mr. Edmonston also, were unacquainted, 

 namely, the rytina, of which I shall have more to say 

 presently (p. 228). 



It would be hazarding too much to identify them 

 with that Sirenian, for its only known habitat is far 

 away northward in Behring's Sea; yet these occurrences 

 seem to me to afford some indication that as this remark- 

 able beast, which was supposed to have become extinct in 

 1768, is now known to have been still in existence in 1854, 

 it is not impossible that, at rare intervals, individuals of 



