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reading of mature minds, and a surer correction of the listless 
idleness of youth. For all of its classes and for every age New¬ 
port needs a public aquarium. For Newport it would be the best 
form of popular education; and as such, it would be within the 
reach of everyone, and, consequently, would be of the greatest 
benefit. 
Another and not less benefit of a public aquarium is the fact 
that it removes that ignorance which is superstition. The my¬ 
thologies of Egypt, Greece and Rome, the Scandinavian folk-lore 
and the myths of the middle ages are full of examples of igno¬ 
rance or superstition that were hurtful. Strange, indeed, were 
the things which used to be told and believed of the animals of 
the sea. There was the Chilon with a man’s head. There were 
the wonderful Dolphins, digging graves for their dead parents 
and friends, always giving them a solemn funeral procession, and 
burying them in graveyards cunningly hidden from rapacious 
fish. Then there was that strange fish the Dies with two wings, 
two legs, but living only for a day. In classic times there was a 
Proteus, a Nereus and a Glaucus, who tended the marine flocks 
of Neptune. Poseidon was nearly always accompanied by queer 
creatures, half men, with cloven feet and long tails, who could 
calm the stormiest sea by a blast of their shell trumpets ; and the 
story was not thought at all improbable. Every country has had 
its legends of horrible sea beings, who entered into ill-fated rela¬ 
tions with human beings only to contrive their ruin. Hence 
comes the White Lady of Scotland, the Vix, or Undine, of Ger¬ 
many, the Merminne of the Netherlands and the Neck of the 
frozen North. From this belief in strange sea monsters, the an¬ 
cients drew their sirens, Blanche, Plarmony and Virgin Eye, who 
lured so many to destruction, until they were defeated by Ulysses. 
Pliny was not quite sure that these tempting singing monsters did 
not exist. The story, changing with the country, as in the u Old 
man of the sea,” of whom we read in the “ Arabian nights,” has 
come down to our day. Perhaps such strange beings were the 
ancestors of the mermen and mermaids, those lonesome dwellers 
of watery wastes. Even Christian authors have delighted to re¬ 
vive pagan beliefs ; but have made the mermen cease to be mere 
monstrosities and have clothed them as human beings, and have 
