The Romance of Natural History Part 7

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CLIMBING PERCH.]

The most celebrated example of this faculty, however, is the climbing perch (_Anabas scandens_) of India. The vagaries of this little fish have been recorded from the earliest times, and numerous modern witnesses have borne record to its powers. Mr E. Layard once encountered several travelling along a hot dusty gravel-road in the mid-day sun.[85]

Daldorf, a Danish zoologist of reputation, a.s.serts that he has seen this species in the act of climbing palm-trees, effecting its ascent by means of fins and tail, with the aid of its spinous gill-covers. There is, however, some doubt whether he was not under mistake in this, though the fact of its crawling up the banks and living out of water is abundantly known.

On the coasts of Ceylon, according to its accomplished historian,--on the rocks which are washed by the surf, there are mult.i.tudes of a curious little fish, (_Salarias alticus_,) which possesses the faculty of darting along the surface of the water, and running up the wet stones, with the utmost ease and rapidity. By aid of its pectoral and ventral fins and gill-cases, it moves across the damp sand, ascends the roots of the mangroves, and climbs up the smooth face of the rocks in search of flies; adhering so securely as not to be detached by repeated a.s.saults of the waves. These little creatures are so nimble, that it is almost impossible to lay hold of them, as they scramble to the edge, and plunge into the sea on the slightest attempt to molest them. They are from three to four inches in length, and of a dark-brown colour, almost indistinguishable from the rocks they frequent.[86]

In all these cases probably, the power of sustaining a protracted privation of water depends on a peculiar structure of the pharynx, which is divided by membranous plates into cells which the fish can fill at pleasure with water, and by ejecting small portions at a time can moisten its gills, and thus preserve the filaments of these organs in a fit condition to maintain the circulation and oxygenation of the blood.

These labyrinthal water-chambers are particularly numerous and complicated in the _Anabas_ just mentioned. This, however, has no a.n.a.logy with the lung of the _Lepidosiren_.

[70] _Mag. Nat. Hist._, ii. 322.

[71] From the _Times_ of Jan. 24, 1861.

[72] The _Oscillatoria_ is a genus of _plants_; it is a microscopic _Alga_ of wire-like form belonging to the great Confervoid family, having the remarkable peculiarity of spontaneous and apparently voluntary motion.

[73] Latrobe's _Alpenstock_, p. 12.

[74] Seemann's _Isthmus of Panama_.

[75] I am indebted for this note to the Rev. Leonard Jenyns. See his edition of White's _Selborne_, (1843) p. 66.

[76] _Zoologist_, pp. 6541, 6564.

[77] _Ceylon_, i. 211.

[78] _Journ. Asiat. Soc. Bengal_, vi. 465.

[79] _Brit. Fishes_, i. xxvii. Aristotle had long before given the same explanation.

[80] _De Pisc. in siceo degent._

[81] _De Piscibus._

[82] _Siam_, i. 144.

[83] _Emb. to Siam_, i. 10.

[84] _Fishes of Guiana_, i. 113.

[85] _Annals N. H._, _May 1853_.

[86] Tennent's _Ceylon_, ii. 498.

III.

MERMAIDS.

According to Berosus there came up from the Red Sea, on the sh.o.r.e contiguous to Babylonia, a brute creature named Oannes, which had the body of a fish, above whose front parts rose the head of a man; it had two human feet, which projected from each side of the tail; it had also a human voice and human language. This strange monster sojourned among the rude people during the day, taking no food, but retiring to the sea again at night; and continued for some time, teaching them the arts of civilised life. Other ancient authors, as Polyhistor and Apollodorus, allude to the same tradition; and we gather that the portrait of the learned stranger (not painted _from the life_, we may presume, considering the condition of the people when he appeared, unless we may suppose it to have been the effort of one of his pupils in the pictorial art under his instruction) was preserved at Babylon to the historic period.

In an elaborate sculpture of the later a.s.syrian period, discovered by M.

Botta at Khorsabad, a maritime expedition is portrayed, and the sea around the s.h.i.+ps is filled with various marine animals, and among them the compound mythic forms of winged bulls and bull-lions, in which the a.s.syrians delighted, together with a figure composed of the body and tail of a fish extended horizontally, and the perpendicular trunk and foreparts of a man, crowned with the sacred cap, possibly representing the traditional Oannes.

The G.o.d Dagon of the Philistines, and the G.o.ddess Atergatis of the Syrians were wors.h.i.+pped under the same combination of the human and piscine forms, and the Tritons of cla.s.sical mythology perpetuated the idea.

It is curious that in almost all ages and in almost all countries there should have prevailed a belief in the actual living existence of creatures like this. Was the mythological symbol the origin of the persuasion? Or is there any marine animal uniting so much of the general form of the fish with that of man as to have given the conception of the idol? A naturalist of deserved eminence has maintained, on purely scientific grounds, that such an animal must exist,--that the laws of nature absolutely require such a being; and though the amount of force which his reasoning, possesses will be estimated differently according as we reject or accept the hypothesis of the circularity of the great plan of nature, we may as well see what he has to say for a marine primate,--be he man or ape, mermaid or mermonkey.

"There is yet," says Mr Swainson, "another primary type necessary to complete the circle of the quadrumanous animals, and it is that which we have elsewhere distinguished as the natatorial; but of such an animal we have only vague and indefinite accounts. It will be seen that, throughout the whole cla.s.s of quadrupeds, the aquatic types are remarkably few, and in general scarce; and that they contain fewer forms or examples than any other, and are often, in the smaller groups, entirely wanting. To account for this is altogether impossible; we can only call attention to the fact, as exemplified in the aquatic order of _Cetacea_, in that of the _Ferae_, in the _Pachydermata_, in the circle of the _Glires_, and in all the remaining natatorial types of the different circles of quadrupeds. We do not implicitly believe in the existence of mermaids as described and depicted by the old writers--with a comb in the one hand and a mirror in the other; but it is difficult to imagine that the numerous records of singular marine animals, unlike any of those well known, have their origin in fraud or gross ignorance. Many of these narratives are given by eye-witnesses of the facts they vouch for--men of honesty and probity, having no object to gain by deception, and whose accounts have been confirmed by other witnesses equally trustworthy. Can it be supposed that the unfathomable depths of ocean are without their _peculiar_ inhabitants, whose habits and economy rarely, if ever, bring them to the surface of the watery element? As reasonably might a Swiss mountaineer disbelieve in the existence of an ostrich, because it cannot inhabit his Alpine precipices, as that we should doubt that the rocks and caverns of the ocean are without animals destined to live in such situations, and such only. The natatorial type of the _Quadrumana_, however, is most a.s.suredly wanting. Whatever its precise construction may or might have been, it would represent and correspond to the seals in the circle of the _Ferae_, or rapacious quadrupeds; while a resemblance to the _Simiadae_, or monkeys, must be considered an essential character of any marine animal which is to connect and complete the circular series of types in the _Quadrumana_."

Mr Swainson absolutely excludes Man from the zoological circle, on grounds which few naturalists are disposed to think sufficient; else we might suggest that man himself is the natatorial type of the _Primates_.

Taking this author's own selection[87] of the characters which mark the natatorial types of animals, for our guide, we find that the largest size, the smallest fore-limbs, the most obtuse muzzle, the most carnivorous appet.i.te, and the most natatory habits (for I do not know that the Apes, or the Sapajous, or the Lemurs, or the Bats, ever take to the water voluntarily, whereas savage Man is always a great swimmer), belong to Man, and so, _Swainsonio ipso judice_, const.i.tute _him_ the true aquatic primate. But if so, we do not want a merman or mermonkey; nay, we should not know where to insert him in the zoological circle if we found him; he would be awkwardly _de trop_.

But yet nature _has_ an awkward way of mocking at our impossibilities; and it _may be_ that green-haired maidens with oary tails lurk in the ocean caves, and keep mirrors and combs upon their rocky shelves.

Certainly the belief in them is very widely spread, and occasionally comes to us from quarters where we should hardly have looked for it. A negro from Dongola a.s.sured Prince Puckler Muskau that in the country of Sennaar there was no doubt that Sirens (mermaids) still existed, for that he himself had seen more than one.[88]

In my boyhood I well recollect being highly excited by the arrival in our town, at fair-time, of a "show," which professed to exhibit a mermaid, whose portrait, on canvas hung outside, was radiant in feminine loveliness and piscine scaliness. I fondly expected to see the very counterpart within, how disposed I did not venture to imagine, but alive and fascinating, of course. Had I not seen her picture? I joyfully paid my coppers, but oh! woful disappointment! I dimly saw, within a dusty gla.s.s case, in a dark corner, a shrivelled and blackened little thing which might have been moulded in mud for aught I could see, but which was labelled, "MERMAID!" 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 j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese curiosity paid well; but yet more productive was the a.s.sertion 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 j.a.panese 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 a.s.sumed 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 are rather mer-swine than mer-maids; but there is something in the bluff round head which may remind a startled observer of the human form divine. Sir Emerson Tennent considers that this rude approach to the human outline, and the att.i.tude of the mother while suckling her young, pressing it to her breast with one paw, while swimming with the other, the head of both being held perpendicularly above water, and then, when disturbed, suddenly diving and displaying her broad fin-like tail,--these, together with her habitual demonstrations of strong maternal affection, may probably have been the original from which the pictures of the mermaid were portrayed, and thus that earliest invention of mythical physiology may be traced to the Arab seamen and to the Greeks, who had watched the movements of the Dugong in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.

The early Portuguese settlers in India had no doubt that true mermen were found in those seas; and the annalist of the exploits of the Jesuits narrates 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." Making allowance for the very limited acquaintance which the worthy physician was likely to have made with human anatomy by actual autopsy, this statement goes for little:--the real resemblance, a.s.suming them to have been Dugongs, was about the same as that presented by the hog, whose inwards are popularly believed by our own country people to be in very close accordance with those of "Christians."

Sir E. Tennent has embellished his book with a very taking portrait of the mermaid on the Dugong hypothesis; shewing two females, each holding a baby [is it right to say _merbaby_?], emerging from the sea-wave; they do look, to be sure, sufficiently human, but the well-known monogram of our clever friend Wolf in the corner of the cut suggests shrewd doubts that the portraits were not "_ad viv_."

It is, perhaps, among the Scandinavian races that the belief in the merman has reached its culminating point. So many particulars are inculcated concerning the mode and conditions of life of these submarine beings, that the most intimate relations appear to have subsisted between the terrestrial and the aquatic peoples. According to the creed of the Nors.e.m.e.n, there exists, far beneath the depths of the ocean, an atmosphere adapted to the breathing organs of beings resembling in form the human race, endowed with surpa.s.sing beauty, with limited supernatural powers, but liable to suffering, and even to death. Their dwelling is in a vast region, situate far below the bottom of the sea, which forms a canopy over them, like the sky over us, and there they inhabit houses constructed of the pearly and coralline productions of the ocean. Having lungs not adapted to a watery medium, but formed for breathing atmospheric air, it would be impossible for them to pa.s.s through the volume of waters that separates our world from theirs, if it were not that they possess the power of entering the skin of some marine animal, whose faculties they thus temporarily acquire, or of changing their own form and structure so as to suit the altered condition through which they are to travel. The most ordinary shape they a.s.sume is, as everybody knows, that of man (that is, their own proper form) from the waist upward, but below that of a fish. Whether they now breathe by gills or lungs, the anatomists, it seems, have not yet determined; we must presume the former alternative, since else it is not apparent what they have gained by their piscine metamorphosis of tail; though where the branchiae are situate we are a little at a loss to imagine. These, however, are matters which doubtless the scientific world will one day determine: it seems certain that they do thus acquire an amphibious nature, so as not only to exist submerged in the waters, but to land on the sh.o.r.es of our sunny world, where they frequently doff their fishy half, resume their proper human form, and pa.s.s muster while they pursue their investigations here.[90]

Unfortunately, but one of these resources can ever be availed of by any individual mer-man or -maid, nor can any "son or daughter of the ocean borrow more than one sea-dress of this kind for his own particular use; therefore if the garb should be mislaid on the sh.o.r.es he never can return to his submarine country and friends. A Shetlander, having once found an empty seal-skin on the sh.o.r.e, took it home and kept it in his possession. Soon after, he met the most lovely being who ever stepped on the earth, wringing her hands with distress, and loudly lamenting, that, having lost her sea-dress, she must remain for ever on the earth. The Shetlander, having fallen in love at first sight, said not a syllable about finding this precious treasure, but made his proposals, and offered to take her for better or for worse, as his future wife! The merlady, though not, as we know, much a woman of the world, very prudently accepted the offer! I never heard what the settlements were, but they lived very happily for some years, till one day, when the green-haired bride unexpectedly discovered her long-lost seal-skin, and instantly putting it on, she took a hasty farewell of everybody, and ran towards the sh.o.r.e. Her husband flew out in pursuit of her, but in vain!

She sprang from point to point, and from rock to rock, till at length, hastening into the ocean, she disappeared for ever, leaving the worthy man, her husband, perfectly planet-struck and inconsolable on the sh.o.r.e!"[91]

Nor are there lacking in the rocky cliffs of our own northern islands fit lodgings for these sea kings and queens. The gifted pen of Sir Walter Scott has sketched one of these from his own observation: "Imagination can hardly conceive anything more beautiful than the extraordinary grotto discovered not many years since upon the estate of Alexander MacAllister, Esq. of Strathaird [in Skye]. The first entrance to this celebrated cave is rude and unpromising: but the light of the torches with which we were provided, was soon reflected from the roof, floor, and walls, which seemed as if they were sheeted with marble, partly smooth, partly rough with frostwork and rustic ornaments, and partly seeming to be wrought into statuary. The floor forms a steep and difficult ascent, and might be fancifully compared to a sheet of water, which, while it rushed whitening and foaming down a declivity, had been suddenly arrested and consolidated by the spell of an enchanter. Upon attaining the summit of this ascent, the cave opens into a splendid gallery, adorned with the most dazzling crystallizations, and finally descends with rapidity to the brink of a pool, of the most limpid water, about four or five yards broad. There opens beyond this pool a portal arch, formed by two columns of white spar, with beautiful chasing upon the sides, which promises a continuation of the cave. One of our sailors swam across, for there is no other mode of pa.s.sing, and informed us (as indeed we partly saw by the light he carried) that the enchantment of MacAllister's cave terminates with this portal, a little beyond which there was only a rude cavern, speedily choked with stones and earth. But the pool on the brink of which we stood, surrounded by the most fanciful mouldings, in a substance resembling white marble, and distinguished by the depth and purity of its waters, might have been the bathing grotto of a naiad. The groups of combined figures projecting or embossed, by which the pool is surrounded, are exquisitely elegant and fanciful. A statuary might catch beautiful hints from the singular and romantic disposition of those stalact.i.tes. There is scarce a form or group on which active fancy may not trace figures or grotesque ornaments, which have been gradually moulded in this cavern by the dropping of the calcareous water hardening into petrifactions. Many of these fine groups have been injured by the senseless rage for appropriation of recent tourists; and the grotto has lost, (I am informed,) through the smoke of torches, something of that vivid silver tint which was originally one of its chief distinctions. But enough of beauty remains to compensate for all that may be lost."[92]

But these tales are the _nugae canorae_ of the naturalist. Once more,--Is there any substratum of truth underlying these fancies? or must they be unhesitatingly dismissed to the region of fable? Certainly, if there were not two or three narratives which have an air of veracity and dependableness, bearing out the belief to some slight extent, I should not have noticed it here.

How simple and circ.u.mstantial is this story told by old Hudson, the renowned navigator! a man whose narrative is more than usually dry and dest.i.tute of everything like, not only imagination, but even an imaginative aspect of ordinary circ.u.mstances. On the 15th of June, when in lat. 75, trying to force a pa.s.sage to the pole near Nova Zembla, he records the following incident: "This morning one of our company looking overboard saw a mermaid; and calling up some of the company to see her, one more came up, and by that time she was come close to the s.h.i.+p's side, looking earnestly on the men. A little after, a sea came and overturned her. From the navel upward, her back and b.r.e.a.s.t.s were like a woman's, as they say that saw her; her body as big as one of us; her skin very white; and long hair hanging down behind, of colour black.

In her going down they saw her tail, which was like the tail of a porpoise, and speckled like a mackerel. Their names that saw her were Thomas Hilles and Robert Rayner."[93]

Whatever explanation be attempted of this apparition, the ordinary resource of seal or walrus will not avail here. Seals and walruses must have been as familiar to these Polar mariners as cows to a dairy-maid.

Unless the whole story was a concerted lie between the two men, reasonless and objectless,--and the worthy old navigator doubtless knew the character of his men,--they must have seen, in the black-haired, white-skinned creature, some form of being as yet unrecognised.

Steller, a zoologist of some repute, who examined the natural history of the Siberian seas, reports having seen, near Behring's Straits, a strange animal, which he calls a Sea-ape. "It was about five feet long, with a head like a dog's; the ears sharp and erect, and the eyes large; on both lips it had a kind of beard; the form of the body was thick and round, but tapering to the tail, which was bifurcated, with the upper lobe longest; the body was covered with thick hair, grey on the back, and red on the belly. Steller could not discover any feet or paws. It was full of frolic, and sported in the manner of a monkey, swimming sometimes on one side of the s.h.i.+p and sometimes on the other, and looking at it with seeming surprise. It would come so near the s.h.i.+p that it might be touched with a pole; but if any one stirred, it would immediately retire. It often raised one third of its body above the water, and stood upright for a considerable time; then suddenly darted under the s.h.i.+p, and appeared in the same att.i.tude on the other side; this it would repeat for thirty times together. It would frequently bring up a sea plant, not unlike a bottle-gourd, which it would toss about and catch again in its mouth, playing numberless fantastic tricks with it."

There is nothing in this description which would exclude it from well-recognised zoological cla.s.sification. It is highly probable that it was one of the seal tribe, but of a species, perhaps a genus, not yet identified. All a.n.a.logy would suggest that fore-paws must have been present in an animal with a dog-like head, and clothed with hair; but they were perhaps small,--smaller even than in other _Phocadae_, and may have been so concealed in the long hair, or held so closely pressed to the body, as not to be visible. The only other difficulty is in the posterior extremity. This is described by Steller in terms that imply a true piscine tail, expanded in a direction vertical to the plane of the body, and of that peculiar form called _heterocercal_, which distinguishes the cartilaginous families of Fishes, the Sharks and Rays.

But the animal was indubitably a Mammal; and therefore we may almost with certainty a.s.sume that, if the body terminated in a natatory expansion, it would be, as in the whales, and manatees, a horizontal expansion, and not a vertical one. But if the strange creature was indeed, as I conclude, of the Phocine type, we have only to suppose the tail, which is usually very small in this family, to have been so greatly developed, as to exceed the united hind feet, which may have been small, and the appearance, seen momentarily, and in the wash of the waves, might well seem that of a heterocercal tail.

Captain Weddell, well known for his geographical discoveries in the extreme south of the globe, relates the following story: "A boat's crew were employed on Hall's Island, when one of the crew, left to take care of some produce, saw an animal whose voice was even musical. The sailor had lain down, and about ten o'clock he heard a noise resembling human cries; and as daylight in these lat.i.tudes never disappears at this season, he rose and looked around; but, on seeing no person, returned to bed; presently he heard the noise again; rose a second time, but still saw nothing. Conceiving, however, the possibility of a boat being upset, and that some of the crew might be clinging to some detached rocks, he walked along the beach a few steps, and heard the noise more distinctly, but in a musical strain. Upon searching round he saw an object lying on a rock a dozen yards from the sh.o.r.e, at which he was somewhat frightened. The face and shoulders appeared of human form, and of a reddish colour; over the shoulders hung long green hair; the tail resembled that of the seal, but the extremities of the arms he could not see distinctly. The creature continued to make a musical noise while he gazed about two minutes, and on perceiving him it disappeared in an instant. Immediately when the man saw his officer, he told this wild tale, and to add weight to his testimony, (being a Romanist,) he made a cross on the sand which he kissed, as making oath to the truth of his statement. When I saw him, he told the story in so clear and positive a manner, making oath to its truth, that I concluded he must really have seen the animal he described, or that it must have been the effects of a disturbed imagination."[94]