THE MERMAID. 235 



The same fate apparently awaits the manatee, which is 

 becoming perceptibly more and more scarce. 



I fear that before many years have elapsed the Sirens of 

 the Naturalist will have disappeared from our earth, before 

 the advance of civilization, as completely as the fables and 

 superstitions with which they have been connected, before 

 the increase of knowledge ; and that the mermaid of fact 

 will have become as much a creature of the past as the 

 mermaid of fiction. With regard to the latter the Siren 

 of the poets, the water-maiden of the pearly comb, the 

 crystal mirror, and the sea-green tresses, there are few 

 persons, I suppose, at the present day who would not be 

 content to be classed with Banks, the fine old naturalist 

 and formerly ship-mate of Captain Cook. Sir Humphry 

 Davy in his " Salmonia " relates an anecdote of a baronet, a 

 profound believer in these fish-tailed ladies, who on hearing 

 some one praise very highly Sir Joseph Banks, said that 

 "Sir Joseph was an excellent man, but he had his pre- 

 judices he did not believe in the mermaid." I confess to 

 having a similar "prejudice ;" and am willing to adopt the 

 further remark of Sir Humphry Davy : " I am too much 

 of the school of Izaac Walton * to talk of impossibility. It 

 doubtless might please God to make a mermaid, but I 

 don't believe God ever did make one." 



* Allusion is here made by Sir H. Davy to a paragraph in ' The 

 Complete Angler,' in which Izaak Walton says : " Indeed, we may 

 say of angling as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries, * Doubtless God 

 could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did ' ; and 

 so (if I might be judge) God never did make a more calm, quiet, 

 innocent recreation than angling." 



