70 
MAMMALIA. 
[Chap. I. 
and the annalist of the exploits of the Jesuits in India, 
gravely records that seven of these monsters, male 
and female, were captured at Manaar in 1560, and 
carried to (xoa, where they were dissected by Demas 
Bosquez, physician to the Viceroy, and " their internal 
structure found to be in all respects conformable to the 
human." 1 
The Dutch were no less inclined to the marvellous, 
and they propagated the belief in the mermaid with 
earnestness and particularity. Valenttn, one of their 
chaplains, in his account of the Natural History of Am- 
boina, embodied in his great work on the Netherlands' 
Possessions in India, published so late as 1727 2 , has de- 
voted the first section of his chapter on the Fishes of 
that island to a minute description of the " Zee-Men- 
schen," Zee-Wyven," and mermaids. As to the dugong 
he admits its resemblance to the mermaid, but repudiates 
the idea of its having given rise to the fable, by being- 
mistaken for one. This error he imagines must have 
arisen at a time when observations on such matters were 
made with culpable laxity; but now more recent and 
minute attention has established the truth beyond 
cavil. 
For instance, he states that in 1653, when a lieutenant 
in the Dutch service was leading a party of soldiers 
along the sea-shore in Amboina, he and all his company 
saw the mermen swimming at a short distance from 
the beach with long and flowing hair, of a colour be- 
tween gray and green — and six weeks afterwards, the 
1 Hist, de la Compagnie de Jesus, van Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indien, 
quoted in the Asiat. Journ. vol. &c. 5 vol. fol. Dordrecht and Am- 
xiv. p. 461; and in Forbes' Orient, sterdam, mdccxxvu. vol. iii. p. 
Memoirs, vol. i. p. 421. 330. 
2 Fran. Vaxentyn, Beschryving 
