The flesh of a young dugong is sweet and tender, and the blubber, dry-cured after the manner of bacon with equal quantities of salt and sugar and finally smoked, quite a delicacy.

Not long since an opportunity was given of examining the effects of a bullet on a dugong.  We had harpooned a calf perhaps a year and a half old, and as it rose to the surface in the first struggle for freedom, I shot it, using a Winchester repeating carbine, 25-35, carrying a metal patched bullet.  There was no apparent wound, and on the second time of rising another bullet was lodged in the head, causing instantaneous death.  When the animal came to be skinned, it was found that the first bullet had completely penetrated the body, the tough, rubber-like hide so contracting over the wounds of entry and exit as to entirely prevent external bleeding.  The fatal bullet had almost completely pulverised the skull, the bones of which were ivory-like in texture.  The appearance of the skull might have led to the conclusion that an explosive instead of a nickel-plated bullet had been used, while if the first bullet had not penetrated several folds of the intestines, no doubt it would have caused the animal very little inconvenience.

The dugong rises to the surface at frequent intervals for air, and the ancients in the rounded heads of the mother and her offspring fancied a resemblance to human beings, who sought to lure the unwary to their mansions beneath the waves.  Hence the scientific title “Sirenia” for the family to which the dugong belongs.  Unpoetical people as the coastal blacks of Queensland are, yet they were among the few who had for neighbours the shy creatures upon whose existence was founded the quaint and engaging legends of the mermaid.

But now we make prosaic bacon from the mermaid’s blubbery sides.  And those long tresses which she was wont to comb as she gloated over her comeliness in her oval mirror and sang those alluring strains, so soothing, so sweet, yet so deceiving—­those wet and tangled locks, where are they?  Is the whole realm of Nature becoming bald?  The hair of the mermaid of to-day is coarse, short and spiky, with inches between each sprout.  For a comb she uses a jagged rock, or cruel coral; for her vanity there is no semblance of pardon; and for her seductive plaint, has it not degenerated into a gulping unmelodious sigh, as she fills her capacious lungs with atmospheric air?

BECHE-DE-MERE

Anticipating the possibility of readers away from the Coral Sea, and to whom no reference to the subject is available, wondering as to the form and character of beche-de-mer, let it be said that the commonest kind in these waters is an enormous slug, varying from 6 inches long by an inch and a half in diameter, to 3 feet 6 inches by 4 inches.  Rough and repulsive in appearance, and sluggish in habit, it has great power of contractibility.  It may assume a dumpy oval shape, and again drag out its slow length until it resembles an attenuated German sausage, black in colour.  Its “face” may be obtruded and withdrawn at pleasure, or rather will, for what creature could have pleasure in a face like a ravelled mop.