had eluded him in the darkness, and was gone, he presumed, to sup with
some enamoured triton, in a submarine grotto.

'But, seriously, Mr Asterias,' said the Honourable Mr Listless, 'do
you positively believe there are such things as mermaids?'


MR ASTERIAS

Most assuredly; and tritons too.


THE HONOURABLE MR LISTLESS

What! things that are half human and half fish?


MR ASTERIAS

Precisely. They are the oran-outangs of the sea. But I am persuaded
that there are also complete sea men, differing in no respect from us,
but that they are stupid, and covered with scales; for, though our
organisation seems to exclude us essentially from the class of
amphibious animals, yet anatomists well know that the _foramen ovale_
may remain open in an adult, and that respiration is, in that case,
not necessary to life: and how can it be otherwise explained that the
Indian divers, employed in the pearl fishery, pass whole hours under
the water; and that the famous Swedish gardener of Troningholm lived
a day and a half under the ice without being drowned? A nereid, or
mermaid, was taken in the year 1403 in a Dutch lake, and was in every