all accounts of sea-women with prominent bosoms were ridiculed and
discredited until competent observers recognised in the form and habits
of certain aquatic animals met with in the bays and estuaries of the
Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, the west coast of Africa, and sub-tropical
America, the originals of these "travellers' tales." These were--first,
the _manatee_, which is found in the West Indian Islands, Florida, the
Gulf of Mexico, and Brazil, and in Africa in the River Congo,
Senegambia, and the Mozambique Channel; second, the _dugong_, or
_halicore_, which ranges along the east coast of Africa, Southern Asia,
the Bornean Archipelago, and Australia; and, third, the _rytina_, seen
on Behring's Island in the Kamschatkan Sea by Steller, the Russian
zoologist and voyager, in 1741, and which is supposed to have become
extinct within twenty-seven years after its discovery, by its having
been recklessly and indiscriminately slaughtered.[68] Then science, in
the person of Illeger, made the _amende honorable_, and frankly
accepting Jack's introduction to his fish-tailed _innamorata_, classed
these three animals together as a sub-order of the animal kingdom, and
bestowed on them the name of the _Sirenia_. This was, of course, in
allusion to the Sirens of classical mythology, who, in later art, were
represented as having the body of a woman above the waist, and that of a
fish below, although the lower portion of their body was originally
described as being in the form of a bird.
[68] Almost all that is known of the living rytina is from an
account published in 1751, in St. Petersburg, by Steller, who was
one of an exploring party wrecked on Behring's Island in 1741.
During the ten months the crew remained on the island they pursued
this easily-captured animal so persistently, for food, that it was
all but annihilated at the time. The last one there was killed in
1768.
It has been found difficult to determine to which order these _Manatidae_
are most nearly allied. In shape they most closely resemble the whales
and seals. But the cetacea are all carnivorous, whereas the manatee and
its relatives live entirely on vegetable food. Although, therefore, Dr.
J. E. Gray, following Cuvier, classed them with the cetacea in his
British Museum catalogue, other anatomists, as Professor Agassiz,
Professor Owen, and Dr. Murie, regard their resemblance to the whales as
rather superficial than real, and conclude from their organisation and
dentition that they ought either to form a group apart or be classed
with the pachyderms--the hippopotamus, tapir, etc.--with which they have
the nearest affinities, and to which they seem to have been more
immediately linked by the now lost genera, _Dinotherium_ and
_Halitherium_. With the opinion of those last-named authorities I
entirely agree. I regard the manatee as exhibiting a wonderful
modification and adaptation of the structure of a warm-blooded land
animal which enables it to pass its whole life in water, and as a
connecting link between the hippopotamus, elephant, etc., on the one
side, and the whales and seals on the other.
The _Halitherium_ was a Sirenian with which we are only acquainted by
its fossil remains found in the Miocene formation of Central and
Southern Europe. These indicate that it had short hind limbs, and,
consequently, approached more nearly the terrestrial type than either
the manatee, the rytina, or the dugong, in which the hind limbs are
absent. The two last named tend more than does the manatee to the marine
mammals; but there is a strong likeness between these three recent
forms. They all have a cylindrical body, like that of a seal, but
instead of hind limbs there is in all a broad tail flattened
horizontally; and the chief difference in their outward appearance is in
the shape of this organ. In the manatee it is rounded, in the dugong
forked like that of a whale, in the rytina crescent-shaped. The tail of
the _Halitherium_ appears to have been shaped somewhat like that of the
beaver. The body of the manatee is broader in proportion to its length
and depth than that of the dugong. In a paper read before the Royal
Society, July 12th, 1821, on a manatee sent to London in spirits by the
Duke of Manchester, then Governor of Jamaica, Sir Everard Home remarked
of this greater lateral expansion that, as the manatee feeds on plants
that grow at the mouths of great rivers, and the dugong upon those met
with in the shallows amongst small islands in the Eastern seas, the
difference of form would make the manatee more buoyant and better fitted
to float in fresh water.
[Illustration: FIG. 16.--THE DUGONG. _From Sir J. Emerson Tennent's
'Ceylon.'_]
In all the _Manatidae_ the mammae of the female, which are greatly
distended during the period of lactation, are situated very differently
from those of the whales, being just beneath the pectoral fins. These
fins or paws are much more flexible and free in their movements than
those of the cetae, and are sufficiently prehensile to enable the animal
to gather food between the palms or inner surfaces of both, and the
female to hold her young one to her breast with one of them. Like the
whales, they are warm-blooded mammals, breathing by lungs, and are
therefore obliged to come to the surface at frequent intervals for
respiration. As they breathe through nostrils at the end of the muzzle,
instead of, like most of the whales, through a blow-hole on the top of
the head, their habit is to rise, sometimes vertically, in the water,
with the head and fore part of the body exposed above the surface, and
often to remain in this position for some minutes. When seen thus, with
head and breast bare, and clasping its young one to its body, the female
presents a certain resemblance to a woman from the waist upward. When
approached or disturbed it dives; the tail and hinder portion of the
body come into view, and we see that if there was little of the "_mulier
formosa superne_," at any rate "_desinit in piscem_." The manatee has
thence been called by the Spaniards and Portuguese the "woman-fish," and
by the Dutch the "manetje," or mannikin. The dugong, having the muzzle
bristly, is named by the latter the "baardmanetje," or "little bearded
man." There are no bristles or whiskers on the muzzle of the manatee;
all the portraits of it in which these are shown are in that respect
erroneous. The origin of the word "manatee" has by some been traced to
the Spanish, as indicating "an animal with hands." On the west coast of
Africa it is called by the natives "Ne-hoo-le." By old writers it was
described as the "sea-cow." Gesner depicts it in the act of bellowing;
and Mr. Bates, in his work, "The Naturalist on the Amazon," says that
its voice is something like the bellowing of an ox. The Florida
"crackers" or "mean whites," make the same statement. Although I have
had opportunities of prolonged observation of it in captivity, I have
not heard it give utterance to any sound--not even a grunt--and Mr.
Bartlett, of the Zoological Gardens, tells me that his experience of it
is the same. His son, Mr. Clarence Bartlett, says that a young one he
had in Surinam used to make a feeble cry, or bleat, very much like the
voice of a young seal. This is the only sound he ever heard from a
manatee.[69]
[69] For a full description of the habits of this animal in
captivity, see an article by the present writer in the 'Leisure
Hour' of September 28, 1878; from which the illustration, Fig. 17,
is borrowed by the kind consent of the Editor of that publication.
I believe the dugong to be more especially the animal referred to by
AElian as the semi-human whale, and that which has led to this group
having been supposed by southern voyagers to be aquatic human beings. In
the first place, the dugong is a denizen of the sea, whereas the manatee
is chiefly found in rivers and fresh-water lagoons; and secondly, the
dugong accords with AElian's description of the creature with a woman's
face in that it has "prickles instead of hairs," whilst the manatee has
no such stiff bristles.
In the case of either of these two animals being mistaken for a
mermaid, however, "distance" must "lend enchantment to the view," and a
sailor must be very impressible and imaginative who, even after having
been deprived for many months of the pleasure of females' society, could
be allured by the charms of a bristly-muzzled dugong, or mistake the
snorting of a wallowing manatee for the love-song of a beauteous
sea-maiden.
[Illustration: FIG. 17.--THE MANATEE. ITS USUAL POSITION.]
Unfortunately both the dugong and the manatee are being hunted to
extinction.
The flesh of the manatee is considered a great delicacy. Humboldt
compares it with ham. Unlike that of the whales, which is of a deep and
dark red hue, it is as white as veal, and, it is said, tastes very like
it. It is remarkable for retaining its freshness much longer than other
meat, which in a tropical climate generally putrefies in twenty-eight
hours. It is therefore well adapted for pickling, as the salt has time
to penetrate the flesh before it is tainted. The Catholic clergy of
South America do not object to its being eaten on fast days, on the
supposition that, with whales, seals, and other aquatic mammals, it may
be liberally regarded as "fish." The "Indians" of the Amazon and Orinoco
are so fond of it that they will spend many days, if necessary, in
hunting for a manatee, and having killed one will cut it into slabs and
slices on the spot, and cook these on stakes thrust into the ground
aslant over a great fire, and heavily gorge themselves as long as the
provision lasts. The milk of this animal is said to be rich and good,
and the skin is valuable for its toughness, and is much in request for
making leathern articles in which great strength and durability are
required. The tail contains a great deal of oil, which is believed to be
extremely nutritious, and has also the property of not becoming rancid.
Unhappily for the dugong, its oil is in similarly high repute, and is
greatly preferred as a nutrient medicine to cod-liver oil. As its flesh
also is much esteemed, it is so persistently hunted on the Australian
coasts that it will probably soon become extinct, like the rytina of
Steller. The same fate apparently awaits the manatee, which is becoming
perceptibly more and more scarce.
I fear that before many years have elapsed the Sirens of the
Naturalist will have disappeared from our earth, before the advance of
civilization, as completely as the fables and superstitions with which
they have been connected, before the increase of knowledge; and that the
mermaid of fact will have become as much a creature of the past as the
mermaid of fiction. With regard to the latter--the Siren of the
poets,--the water-maiden of the pearly comb, the crystal mirror, and the
sea-green tresses,--there are few persons I suppose, at the present day
who would not be content to be classed with Banks, the fine old
naturalist and formerly ship-mate of Captain Cook. Sir Humphry Davy in
his _Salmonia_ relates an anecdote of a baronet, a profound believer in
these fish-tailed ladies, who on hearing some one praise very highly Sir
Joseph Banks, said that "Sir Joseph was an excellent man, but he had his
prejudices--he did not believe in the mermaid." I confess to having a
similar "prejudice;" and am willing to adopt the further remark of Sir
Humphry Davy:--"I am too much of the school of Izaac Walton to talk of
impossibility. It doubtless might please God to make a mermaid, but I
don't believe God ever did make one."
THE LERNEAN HYDRA.
The mystery of the Kraken, of which I treated in a companion volume to
the present, recently published, is not difficult to unravel. The clue
to it is plain, and when properly taken up is as easily unwound, to
arrive at the truth, as a cocoon of silk, to get at the chrysalis within
it. It was a boorish exaggeration, a legend of ignorance, superstition,
and wonder. But when such a skein of facts has passed through the hands
of the poets, it is sure to be found in a much more intricate tangle;
and many a knot of pure invention may have to be cut before it is made
clear.
Nevertheless, we shall be able to discern that more than one of the most
famous and hideous monsters of old classical lore originated, like the
Kraken, in a knowledge by their authors of the form and habits of those
strange sea-creatures, the head-footed mollusks. There can be little
doubt that the octopus was the model from which the old poets and
artists formed their ideas, and drew their pictures of the Lernean
Hydra, whose heads grew again when cut off by Hercules; and also of the
monster Scylla, who, with six heads and six long writhing necks,
snatched men off the decks of passing ships and devoured them in the
recesses of her gloomy cavern.
Of the Hydra Diodorus relates that it had a hundred heads; Simonides
says fifty; but the generally received opinion was that of Apollodorus,
Hyginus, and others, that it had only nine.
Apollodorus of Athens, son of Asclepiades, who wrote in stiff, quaint
Greek about 120 B.C., gives in his 'Bibliotheca' (book ii. chapter 5,
section 2) the following account of the many-headed monster. "This
Hydra," he says, "nourished in the marshes of Lerne, went forth into the
open country and destroyed the herds of the land. It had a huge body and
nine heads, eight mortal, but the ninth immortal. Having mounted his
chariot, which was driven by Iolaus, Hercules got to Lerne and stopped
his horses. Finding the Hydra on a certain raised ground near the source
of the Amymon, where its lair was, he made it come out by pelting it
with burning missiles. He seized and stopped it, but having twisted
itself round one of his feet, it struggled with him. He broke its head
with his club: but that was useless; for when one head was broken two
sprang up, and a huge crab helped the Hydra by biting the foot of
Hercules. This he killed, and called Iolaus, who, setting on fire part
of the adjoining forest, burned with torches the germs of the growing
heads, and stopped their development. Having thus out-manoeuvred the
growing heads, he cut off the immortal head, buried it, and put a heavy
stone upon it, beside the road going from Lerne to Eleonta, and having
opened the Hydra, dipped his arrows in its gall."
If we wish to find in nature the counterpart of this Hydra, we must
seek, firstly, for an animal with eight out-growths from its trunk,
which it can develop afresh, or replace by new ones, in case of any or
all of them being amputated or injured. We must also show that this
animal, so strange in form and possessing such remarkable attributes,
was well known in the locality where the legend was believed. We have it
in the octopus, which abounded in the Mediterranean and AEgean seas, and
whose eight prehensile arms, or tentacles, spring from its central body,
the immortal head, and which, if lost or mutilated by misadventure, are
capable of reproduction.
[Illustration: FIG. 18.--FIGURE OF A CALAMARY. _From the temple of
Bayr-el-Bahree_.]
That a knowledge of the octopus existed at a very early period of man's
history we have abundant evidence. The ancient Egyptians figured it
amongst their hieroglyphics, and an interesting proof that they were
also acquainted with other cephalopods was given to me by the late Mr.
E. W. Cooke, R.A. Whilst on a trip up the Nile, in January, 1875, he
visited the temple of Bayr-el-Bahree, Thebes (date 1700 B.C.), the
entrance to which had been deeply buried beneath the light, wind-drifted
sand, accumulated during many centuries. By order of the Khedive, access
had just at that time been obtained to its interior, by the excavation
and removal of this deep deposit, and, amongst the hieroglyphics on the
walls, were found, between the zig-zag lines which represent water,
figures of various fishes, copies of which Mr. Cooke kindly gave me, and
which are so accurately portrayed as to be easily identified. With them
was the outline of a squid fourteen inches long, a figure of which, from
Mr. Cooke's drawing, is here shown. As this temple is five hundred miles
from the delta of the Nile, it is remarkable that nearly all the fishes
there represented are of marine species.
[Illustration: FIG. 19.--FIGURE OF AN OCTOPUS ON A GOLD ORNAMENT, FOUND
BY DR. SCHLIEMANN AT MYCENAE.]
That the octopus was a familiar object with the ancient Greeks, we know
by the frequency with which its portrait is found on their coins, gems,
and ornaments. Aldrovandus describes "very ancient coins" found at
Syracuse and Tarentum bearing the figure of an octopus. He says the
Syracusans had two coins, one of bronze, the other of gold, both of
which had an octopus alone on one side. On the reverse of the bronze one
was a veiled female face in profile, with the inscription [Greek: SURA].
I have one of these bronze Syracusan coins; it was kindly given to me,
some years ago, by my friend, Dr. John Millar, F.L.S. The octopus is
really well depicted. On the gold coin the female head was differently
veiled, and at the back of the neck was a fish. The inscription on this
coin was [Greek: SURAKOSION]. Goltzius was of the opinion that the head
was that of Arethusa. The coins found at Tarentum had on one side a
figure of Neptune seated on a dolphin, and holding an octopus in one
hand and a trident in the other.
[Illustration: FIG. 20.--GOLDEN ORNAMENT IN FORM OF AN OCTOPUS, FOUND BY
DR. SCHLIEMANN AT MYCENAE.]
Lerne, or Lerna, the reputed home of the Hydra, was a port of Southern
Greece, situated at the head of the Gulf of Nauplia, and between the
existing towns of Argos and Tripolitza. Within a few miles of it was
Mycenae; and it is remarkable that Dr. Schliemann, during his excavations
there in 1876, found in a tomb a gold plate, or button, two and a half
inches in diameter (Fig. 19), on which is figured an octopus, the eight
arms of which are converted into spirals, the head and the two eyes
being distinctly visible. In another sepulchre he discovered fifty-three
golden models of the octopus (Fig. 20), all exactly alike, and
apparently cast in the same mould. The arms are very naturally carved.
By the kindness of Mr. Murray, his publisher, I am enabled to give
illustrations of these and two other handsome ornaments.
Having ascertained that the octopus was a familiar object in the very
locality where the combat between Hercules and the Hydra is supposed to
have taken place, let us compare the animal as it exists with the
monstrous offspring of Typhon and Echidna.
[Illustration:
FIG. 21. FIG. 22.
FIGURES OF THE OCTOPUS ON GOLD ORNAMENTS FOUND BY DR. SCHLIEMANN AT
MYCENAE.]
It is a not uncommon occurrence that when an octopus is caught it is
found to have one or more of its arms shorter than the rest, and showing
marks of having been amputated, and of the formation of a new growth
from the old cicatrix. Several such specimens were brought to the
Brighton Aquarium whilst I had charge of its Natural History Department.
One of them was particularly interesting. Two of its arms had evidently
been bitten off about four inches from the base: and out from the end of
each healed stump (which in proportion to the length of the limb was as
if a man's arm had been amputated halfway between the shoulder and the
elbow), grew a slender little piece of newly-formed arm, about as large
as a lady's stiletto, or a small button-hook--in fact just the
equivalent of worthy Captain Cuttle's iron hook, which did duty for his
lost hand. It was an illustrative example of the commencement of the
repair and restoration of mutilated limbs.
This mutilation is so common in some localities, that Professor
Steenstrup says[70] that almost every octopus he has examined has had
one or two arms reproduced; and that he has seen females in which all
the eight arms had been lost, but were more or less restored. He also
mentions a male in which this was the case as to seven of its arms. He
adds that whilst the _Octopoda_ possess the power of reproducing with
great facility and rapidity their arms, which are exposed to so many
enemies, the _Decapoda_--the _Sepiidae_ and Squids--appear to be
incapable of thus repairing and replacing accidental injuries. This is
entirely in accord with my own observations.
[70] Ann. and Mag. Nat. Hist. August, 1857.
This reparative power is possessed by some other animals, of which the
starfishes and crustacea are the most familiar instances. In the case of
the lobster or crab, however, the only joint from which new growth can
start is that connected with the body, so that if a limb be injured in
any part, the whole of it must be got rid of, and the animal has,
therefore, the power of casting it off at will. The octopus, on the
contrary, is incapable of voluntary dismemberment, but reproduces the
lost portion of an injured arm, as an out-growth from the old stump.
The ancients were well acquainted with this reparative faculty of the
octopus: but of course the simple fact was insufficient for an
imaginative people: and they therefore embellished it with some fancies
of their own. There lingers still amongst the fishermen of the
Mediterranean a very old belief that the octopus when pushed by hunger
will gnaw and devour portions of its arms. Aristotle knew of this
belief, and positively contradicted it; but a fallacy once planted is
hard to eradicate. You may cut it down, and apparently destroy it, root
and branch, but its seeds are scattered abroad, and spring up elsewhere,
and in unexpected places. Accordingly, we find Oppian, more than five
centuries later, disseminating the same old notion, and comparing this
habit of the animal with that of the bear obtaining nutriment from his
paws by sucking them during his hybernation.
"When wintry skies o'er the black ocean frown,
And clouds hang low with ripen'd storms o'ergrown,
Close in the shelter of some vaulted cave
The soft-skinn'd prekes[71] their porous bodies save.
But forc'd by want, while rougher seas they dread,
On their own feet, necessitous, are fed.
But when returning spring serenes the skies,
Nature the growing parts anew supplies.
Again on breezy sands the roamers creep,
Twine to the rocks, or paddle in the deep.
Doubtless the God whose will commands the seas,
Whom liquid worlds and wat'ry natives please,
Has taught the fish by tedious wants opprest
Life to preserve and be himself the feast."
[71] The octopus is still called the "preke" in some parts of
England, notably in Sussex. The translation of Oppian's
'Halieutics,' from which this passage and others are quoted is that
by Messrs. Jones and Diaper, of Baliol College, Oxford, and was
published in 1722.
The fact is, that the larger predatory fishes regard an octopus as very
acceptable food, and there is no better bait for many of them than a
portion of one of its arms. Some of the cetacea also are very fond of
them, and whalers have often reported that when a "fish" (as they call
it) is struck it disgorges the contents of its stomach, amongst which
they have noticed parts of the arms of cuttles which, judging from the
size of their limbs, must have been very large specimens. The food of
the sperm whale consists largely of the gregarious squids, and the
presence in spermaceti of their undigested beaks is accepted as a test
of its being genuine. That old fish-reptile, the Ichthyosaurus, also,
preyed upon them; and portions of the horny rings of their suckers were
discovered in its coprolites by Dean Buckland. Amongst the worst enemies
of the octopus is the conger. They are both rock-dwellers, and if the
voracious fish come upon his cephalopod neighbour unseen, he makes a
meal of him, or, failing to drag him from his hold, bites off as much of
one or two of his arms as he can conveniently obtain. The conger,
therefore, is generally the author of the injury which the octopus has
been unfairly accused of inflicting on itself.