328 FISHING GOSSIP. 
Coins are even now known which have this repre- 
sentation; and within not many years past a structure 
representing the same object was found on board and 
stolen from a Chinese fishing-boat.. By the men of 
this boat, beyond doubt, it had been esteemed a pro- 
tecting deity to their pursuits. Later still, a figure 
of a similar kind, formed perhaps of the head and 
shoulders of a monkey united to the body and tail of 
a fish, was carried to America from Japan under 
similar circumstances. It is probable that the great 
god Dagon of the Philistines, mentioned in the Bible, 
and which was a male deity, and was reverenced even 
in Etruria, although with a more emblematic image, 
‘may have been either the husband or the son of Queen 
Atergatis, since some difference was made in the 
statues which represented them, and that of Atergatis 
bore a female form. But it might have been in either 
case only the restoration of what had been recognised 
in the ages before the flood; for a tradition is recorded 
by Sanchoniatho that a Dagon was known in the 
same manner at that early date. And it is to be 
further observed that in the former case, as perhaps 
also in the latter, these first fishermen had directed © 
their attention to the improvement of the arts of 
agriculture, which may account for a double signifi- 
cation of the name. The word Dagon signifies a fish 
divinity ; and accordingly in the history given of him 
by the judge-prophet Samuel only his arms are men- 
