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 Groa, 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. Valentyn, 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. &e. 5 vol. fol. Dordrecht and Am- 

 xiv. p. 461; and in Forbes' Orient, sterdam, mdccxxvh. vol. iii. p. 

 Memoirs, vol. i. p. 421. 330. 



2 Fran. Valentyn, Beschryving 



