MAID!" So great was my disgust, so bitter my feelings
of shame and anger at having been so grossly taken in, that I did not
care to observe what might have been noteworthy in it. I read afterwards
that it was a very ingenious cheat; the trunk and head of a monkey had
been grafted on to the body and tail of a large salmon-like fish, and
the junction had been so cleverly effected, that only a very close
examination detected the artifice. It professed to have been brought
from China, but possibly was an importation even thither, if Steinmetz
is correct. According to this writer, "A Japanese fisherman contrived to
unite the upper half of a monkey to the lower half of a fish, so neatly
as to defy ordinary inspection. He then gave out that he had caught the
creature alive in his net, but that it had died shortly after being
taken out of the water; and he derived considerable pecuniary profit
from his cunning in more ways than one. The exhibition of the
sea-monster to Japanese curiosity paid well; but yet more productive was
the assertion that the half-human fish, having spoken the few minutes it
existed out of its native element, had predicted a certain number of
years of wonderful fertility, and a fatal epidemic, the only remedy for
which would be possession of the marine prophet's likeness. The sale of
these pictured mermaids was immense. Either this composite animal, or
another, the offspring of the success of the first, was sold at the
Dutch factory, and transmitted to Batavia, where it fell into the hands
of a speculating American, who brought it to Europe, and here, in the
years 1822-3, exhibited his purchase as a real mermaid at every capital,
to the admiration of the ignorant, the perplexity of the learned, and
the filling of his own purse. Indeed, the mermaids exhibited in Europe
and America, to the great profit of the enterprising showmen, have all
been of Japanese manufacture."[89]

This, however, will not account for the frequent reports of the living
creatures having been seen, and unbelievers have to form some other
hypothesis. In the tropical seas the cow-whales, uncouth marine
_pachydermata_, have been assumed to be the originals of these stories.
Megasthenes reported that the sea which washed Taprobane, the modern
Ceylon, was inhabited by a creature having the appearance of a woman;
and AElian improves the account by stating that there are whales having
the form of satyrs. 'Tis true the Manatee and the Dugong