58 
ANIMAL CURIOSITIES 
that member, and concealed by the tuft of 
hair, serving as a scourge. That the tail of 
a lion, however, should be used as a weapon 
of offence is an even more remarkable belief, 
but one person, at all events, was labouring 
under that delusion, for the writer once heard 
a working-man remark to his wife as they 
stood before the cage of a lion at the Zoo, 
“ Just fancy him being able to kill a man with 
a blow of his tail.” 
Mention must be made of the mermaid 
concerning which much has been written in 
the past. Valentyn, a Dutchman, states that 
during a storm in the year 1404 a mermaid 
was driven through a hole made in the dyke 
at Edam, and was subsequently captured. 
She was taken to Haarlem, and the womenfolk 
took such an interest in her that they taught 
her to spin. Her education proceeded apace, 
it seems, judging by the report that she died 
several years afterwards in the Catholic Faith. 
The same authority also tells us that in 1653 
a lieutenant was leading some soldiers along 
the sea-shore in Amboina when they suddenly 
espied a mermaid with long, flowing and 
greenish-grey hair disporting herself in the 
waters; while Albert Herport records the 
appearance of both a merman and a mermaid 
together in the water; and in 1714 another 
