[Footnote 1:  Halicore dugung, F. Cuv.]

[Footnote 2:  The skeleton is now in the Museum of the Natural History Society of Belfast.]

[Illustration:  THE DUGONG.]

The rude approach to the human outline, observed in the shape of the head of this creature, and the attitude of the mother when suckling her young, clasping it to her breast with one flipper, while swimming with the other, holding the heads of both above water; and when disturbed, suddenly diving and displaying her fish-like tail,—­these, together with her habitual demonstrations of strong maternal affection, probably gave rise to the fable of the “mermaid;” and thus that earliest invention of mythical physiology may be traced to the Arab seamen and the Greeks, who had watched the movements of the dugong in the waters of Manaar.

Megasthenes records the existence of a creature in the ocean, near Taprobane, with the aspect of a woman[1]; and AElian, adopting and enlarging on his information, peoples the seas of Ceylon with fishes having the heads of lions, panthers, and rams, and, stranger still, cetaceans in the form of satyrs.  Statements such as these must have had their origin in the hairs, which are set round the mouth of the dugong, somewhat resembling a beard, which AElian and Megasthenes both particularise, from their resemblance to the hair of a woman:  “[Greek:  kai gynaikon opsin echousin aisper anti plokamon akanthai prosertentai"][2]

[Footnote 1:  MEGASTHENES, Indica, fragm. lix. 34,]

[Footnote 2:  AELIAN, Nat.  Hist., lib. xvi. ch. xviii.]

The Portuguese cherished the belief in the mermaid, 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 Goa, 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]

[Footnote 1:  Hist, de la Compagnie de Jesus, quoted in the Asiat.  Journ. vol. xiv. p. 461; and in FORBES’ Orient.  Memoirs, vol. i. p. 421.]

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 Amboina, embodied in his great work on the Netherlands’ Possessions in India, published so late as 1727[1], has devoted the first section of his chapter on the Fishes of that island to a minute description of the “Zee-Menschen, 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.