THE WHALES. 13 



tribe has been known, and there are not wanting 

 persons who aver that even if none are known to 

 exist at present,, some have existed, and have been the 

 cause of the legends respecting mermaids and mermen, 

 which have been current in every part of the world 

 where there is a sea coast, and where a written lan- 

 guage exists. It is worthy of notice that in Japan, 

 as well as in England, the legendary mermaid is 

 quite familiar to the popular mind, and that it is from 

 Japan that have been procured those ingenious com- 

 positions of skin, papier-mache, membranes, hair, 

 teeth, bones, and scales, which have been palmed off 

 upon the public as genuine mermaids. 



In one sense they are very unlike the mermaid of 

 romance. She was always represented as a veritable 

 human being in size, as well as in shape, as far as 

 the waist, while the rest of the body was that of a 

 fish. She was also held to be superbly beautiful, and, 

 by means of that beauty, to have decoyed many a 

 heedless lover beneath the waves. 



Now the Japanese mermaids are little more than 

 mere dolls in point of size. The celebrated specimen 

 of which Barnum made such a speculation, was not 

 quite three feet in length I speak from memory 

 because, though I saw it repeatedly, I did not measure 

 it. The thing was hideously ugly, with the head 

 drawn on one side, and the features contorted, as if it 

 had died in fearful agonies. It was a mean, wizened, 

 mummified, and most repulsive object, and except that 

 it exhibited the junction of a mammal with a fish, had 

 nothing in common with the mermaid of tradition. I 

 have seen many specimens of Japanese mermaids, and 



