^0 
possession : and the engravings which accompany 
the first of these naturalists memoirs, are sufficiently 
correct to have satisfied the antomist of Grroningen, 
wliether he really possessed the same animal which 
the three writers, whose names I have just mentioned, 
have so distinctly noticed or described. There is, 
certainly, a great difficulty (I had almost said, an in- 
extricable mystery) in the view of this subject : and 
the difficulty is peculiarly great to me, as I have 
never been so fortunate as to procure the memoir of 
Camper. 
But, indeed, this industrious naturalist’s theory of 
the Siren cannot be supported by any plausible ar- 
guments ; or, at best, not by any solid facts. One 
cannot well refrain from smiling at his notion (which ’ 
Gmelinso hastily embraced,) that the two feet of the 
Syren are to be considered in the light of mere digi- 
tated fins.* r;ad Camper seen the living Siren, as 
I have done, he would not, he could not, have adopt- 
ed an idea so extremely crude, and unfounded. For 
although the American animal uses his legs in swim- 
ming, he does not use them as fish do their fins : but 
employs them, as other animals (w hile swimming,) 
employ their arms or legs — The annexed figure con- 
veys a very correct idea of the Siren, while in the 
act of swdmming, in a circular vessel. (See Fig. 1.) 
The supposed fins of the Siren appear to be of 
great use to him, in searching for his food. When I 
* Muraena (Siren) piimis pectoralibus tetradactylis, &c. Systema 
naturae, tom i. part iii p 1136 — I know not now many naturalists, 
or wi’iters of natural history, Camper has misled. Dr Turton has 
implicitly followed Gmelin ; and so has the author of an useful in- 
troduction to Zoology, entitled “ Elements of Natural History,” 8cc- 
vol. i page 320. Edinburgh, 1801. 
