Note 2219 — BOOK IX. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF FISHES.

One of the Scholiasts on Homer says, that before the discovery of the brazen trumpet by the Tyrrhenians, the conch-shell was in general use for that purpose. Hardouin, with considerable credulity, remarks here, that it is no fable, that the nereids and tritons had a human face; and says that no less than fifteen instances, ancient and modern, had been adduced, in proof that such was the fact. He says that this was the belief of Scaliger, and quotes the book of Aldrovandus on Monsters, p. 36. But, as Cuvier remarks, it is impossible to explain these stories of nereids and tritons, on any other grounds than the fraudulent pretences of those who have exhibited them, or asserted that they have seen them. “It was only last year,” he says, “that all London was resorting to see a wonderful sight in what is commonly called a mermaid. I myself had the opportunity of examining a very similar object: it was the body of a child, in the mouth of which they had introduced the jaws of a sparus [probably our “gilt-head],” while for the legs was substituted the body of a lizard. The body of the London mermaid,” he says, “was that of an ape, and a fish attached to it supplied the place of the hind legs.”