Note 20 — Relation of the Filipinas Islands

The woman-fish20 is so called because its face and breast are quite like those of women, whom it also resembles in its manner of copulation with the male. That fish is as large as a calf, and its flesh, of which I have eaten, tastes like beef. It is caught with lines as thick around as the finger, and when the line becomes fast within [its mouth] it is killed by javelin-thrusts. Its bones and teeth have great virtue against all sorts of dysentery, especially against bloody discharges. Some have tried to assert that those fish were the sirens of the sea, so celebrated among the poets; but they have nothing of the beauty of face and of the voice that is attributed to sirens.