CHAPTER X 
THE MYTHOLOGY OF FISHES 
WHE Mermaid.-A word may be said of the fishes 
which have no existence in fact and yet appear in 
y-*| popular literature or in superstition. 
The mermaid, half woman and half fish, has been one 
of the most tenacious among these, and the manufacture of 
their dried bodies from the head, shoulders, and ribs of a 
monkey sealed to the body of a fish has long been a profitable 
industry in the Orient. The sea-lion, the dugong, and other 
marine mammals have been mistaken for mermaids, for their 
faces seen at a distance and their movements at rest are not 
inhuman, and their limbs and movements in the water are 
fishlike. 
In China, small mermaids are very often made and sold to 
the curious. The head and torso of a monkey are fastened 
ingeniously to the body and tail of a fish. It is said that Lin- 
nzeus was once forced to leave a town in Holland for question- 
ing the genuineness of one of these mermaids, the property of 
some high official. These monsters are still manufactured for 
the ‘‘ curio-trade.”’ 
The Monk-fishMany strange fishes were described in the 
Middle Ages, the interest usually centering in some supposed 
relation of their appearance with the affairs of men. Some of 
these find their way into Rondelet’s excellent book, ‘“ Histoire 
Entiére des Poissons,” in 1558. Two of these with the accom- 
panying plate of one we here reproduce. Other myths less 
interesting grew out of careless, misprinted, or confused ac- 
counts on the part of naturalists and travelers. 
“Tn our times in Norway a sea-monster has been taken after 
a great storm, to which all that saw it at once gave the name of 
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