10 NOTES ON FISH AND FISHING. 



fishing in Izaak Walton's "First Day." We have, 

 within the last few years, fairly "spotted" the sea- 

 serpent; and, within a day or two of my inditing this 

 note, a notice has appeared in one of our daily newspapers 

 of a veritable merman or man-fish having been distinctly 

 seen by the crews of two ships in different waters, only a 

 week or so ago; not the traditional mermaid exactly, 

 mulier formosa superne who desinit in piscem, but a 

 merman, with fine beard and whiskers, though " with 

 slender waist as of a boy of fourteen," ending en regie, 

 with " a large forked tail." Dr. Mayer assures us that 

 in 1403 a.d., a mermaid was cast ashore near Haar- 

 lem, who was fed on bread and milk, taught to spin, 

 and wore clothes " like any Christian." And as a Chris- 

 tian she was treated after death, for she was buried in a 

 consecrated churchyard, having learnt to make the sign 

 of the cross, though her attempts at speech were not very 

 successful. In 1610 Captain Waithburn is recorded to 

 have seen a mermaid in St. John's Harbour, Newfound- 

 land, who tried to get into his boat, and was only pre- 

 vented from so doing by one of the men striking her 

 most ungallantly with an oar. Now, however, after a 

 long interval of disappearance, and in this prosaic latter 

 half of the nineteenth century, we have the classic merman 

 tribe coming to the fore again. What a fortune for 

 a public aquarium, if a member of it could be safely 

 " tanked " ! 



But this is a digression from serious ichthyology. 

 There are many questions most interesting to the angler 

 as well as the ichthyologist in connexion with the Senses 

 of fish. There is that of the Vision of fish ; one on which 

 both anglers and naturalists seem to differ, some affirm- 



