100 The Animal-Lore of ShaJcspeare’s Time . 
The grampus has a fin on its back, but not of the dimen¬ 
sions or sharpness sometimes ascribed to it. Insatiate in 
its appetite, this creature may well be accounted the 
emblem of voracity. 
“ ’Twere to consider too curiously ” to attempt to give 
an accurate scientific description of the marine mon¬ 
strosity which Lear imagined to exceed in deformity 
filial ingratitude:— 
“ Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend, 
More hideous when thou show’st thee in a child 
Than the sea-monster.” 
(j Lear, i. 4, 281.) 
Blefkens, whose account of Iceland in 1563 is included 
in Purchas’s Collection, has evolved from his inner con¬ 
sciousness a creature of whom he might have written— 
“ Which cannot look more hideously upon me 
Than I have drawn it in my fantasy: ”— 
“ The Iseland Sea hath a monster also, whose name is unknowne. 
They judge it a kinde of whale at the first sight, when hee shews his 
head out of the sea, he so scarreth men that they fall downe almost 
dead. His square head hath flaming eyes, on both sides fenced with 
long homes; his body is blacke, and beset with black quills. If he be 
seen by night his eyes are fiery, which lighten his whole head, which 
he putteth out of the sea. Nothing can either bee painted or imagined 
more fearefull. Olaus Magnus makes mention of this monster in his 
twentieth booke, and saith that it is twelve cubits long.” ( Purchas , 
vol. iii. p. 650.) 
It has been thought that the Manatee, or Dugong, a 
marine animal, with a round head, two finiike 
flappers, a long body, and a short broad tail, 
was the original of the strange stories that were brought 
home by travellers of the mermaids of the far West. 
Anything less like tne form of a beautiful woman than 
this dull, shapeless creature it would be difficult to 
imagine. The manatee exhibited a few years ago at the 
