MAMMALOGY. 



past ages while they afford at least to our mind some distant reason 

 for believing that these animals were not unknown to the Greeks and 



It is indeed not the least surprising part of the history of this article, 

 that so many individuals of the medical profession should have endeavour- 

 ed to assimilate the characters and conformation of the upper portion of 

 this object with the human frame, and thence deduce, as a natural inference, 

 that not being really human it can be no other than the Mermaid. With all 

 due respect for the profession these inferences are erroneous : the conclu- 

 sions that can lead to this persuasion must be specious and superficial and 

 can be accounted for only upon this ground, that it is not incumbent upon 

 those medical gentlemen, however eminent in their profession, to be con- 



ticity, and the declaration of its being an ugly or a very curious creature very gene- 

 rally concluded the routine of cursory investigation. 



The persuasion of the Mermaid having webs between the fingers of the hands is 

 of some antiquity ; generally speaking, in the classic ages Mermaids or Sirens were 

 believed to have the body and limbs from the waist upwards in all respects accord- 

 ing with the figure of the human female ; there existed, however, in the Royal Danish 

 Museum, under the reign of Frederick the Fourth,an object which might have given 

 birth to that idea, for in that example, instead of hands, the short lateral processes 

 denominated arms, and which sprang from each side nearly parallel with the teats, 

 were terminated each in a quinque lobate, or five-lobed fin, in which the bones of five 

 distinct fingers were seen, covered with and united by a common skin, as in the 

 webbed feet of animals. 



The celebrity of this object, honoured as it appears with royal countenance, was 

 known throughout Europe, and perhaps, as we have alrep_'^y said, gaVe rise to an 

 opinion of the "true Mermaids or Sirens" having webs between the fingers of the 

 hands. This curiosity, which John Laurentzen very gravely classes in his " Museum 

 Regium'* or descriptive catalogue of that museum among the Fishes! seems to have 

 been less ambiguously contrived than the Mermaid of our days ; it is precisely a 

 lusus, or a distorted object of the human species ; the head, shoulders, and breast 

 display the front view, but owing to some monstrosity or contrivance all beneath the 

 breasts were those of the posterior view, exhibiting the lumbar region below the 

 thoracic ; the nates, and thighs and legs distinct; but so closely pressed together as 

 to appear united. Thus its general appearance at once suggested the idea of a 

 human subject, which having been separated across the middle, had been so placed 

 again together that from the breast upwards the front view was presented, while all 

 below was that of the posterior. The hands with webbed fingers,which were inserted 

 into the sides, were those most certainly of the Phoca or seal tribe, as appears from 

 their anatomical Structure depicted by Laurent25eD, and which, like others of the 



