2o6 PLEASANT WAYS Ifi? SCIENCE. 



lowing story related by Hudson, the famous navigator : 

 " One of our company, looking overboard, saw a mermaid 

 and calling up some of the company to see her, one more 

 came up, and by that time she was come close to the ship's 

 side, looking earnestly on the men. A little after a sea 

 came and overturned her. From the navel upward her back 

 and breasts were like a woman's, as they say that saw her ; 

 her body as big as one of us ; her skin very white ; and long 

 hair hanging down behind, of colour black. In her going 

 down they saw her tail, which was like the tail of a porpoise 

 and speckled like a mackerel" If Hudson himself had seen 

 and thus described the creature it would have been possible 

 to regard the story with some degree of credence ; but his 

 account of what Thomas Hilles and Robert Rayner, men 

 about whose character for veracity we know nothing, said 

 they saw, is of little weight. The skin very white, and long 

 hair hanging down behind, are especially suspicious features 

 of the narrative ; and were probably introduced to dispose 

 of the idea, which others of the crew may have advanced, 

 that the creature was only some kind of seal after all. The 

 female seal (Phoca Greenlandica is the pretty name of the 

 animal) is not, however, like the male, tawny grey, but 

 dusky white, or yellowish straw-colour, with a tawny tint on 

 the back. The young alone could be called " very white." 

 They are so white in fact as scarcely to be distinguishable 

 when lying on ice and snow, a. circumstance which, as 

 Darwin considers, serves as a protection for these little 

 fellows. 



The following story, quoted by Gosse from Dr. Robert 

 Hamilton's able " History of the Whales and Seals," compares 

 favourably in some respects with the last narrative : " It 

 was reported that a fishing-boat off the island of Yell, one of 

 the Shetland group, had captured a mermaid by its getting 

 entangled in the lines ! The statement is, that the animal 

 is about three feet long, the upper part of the body resem 

 bling the human, with protuberant mammae like a woman ; 

 the face, the forehead, and neck, were short, and resembling 



