This belief in sea-monsters of all kinds was naturally not a chance that a man like Aldrovandus could miss. He gives his imagination full scope, or perhaps we should rather say his credulity, as he introduces these creatures to us as things as real as a rabbit; his sea-monk, for instance, with tonsured human head, arms replaced by fins, and legs by fishy tail, being as matter of fact as one’s vicar. Fig. 25 is given by him in all good faith as the true presentment of a sea-bishop, though not at all our notion of a bishop in his see. The right hand, it will be seen, is giving the benediction. The dragon of the deep, shown in fig. 26, aims at being terrible, but merely succeeds in being feeble. We cannot but feel that the draughtsman here failed to reach our ideal; for one has certainly seen, many representations of land-dragons far more fear-inspiring than this bloated monster with ears like a King Charles spaniel, and tail like a rat. This illustration is from another source, the work of Ambrosinus on the same subject, published “permissu superiorum” in the year 1642. While the book is as quaint and grotesque as any of its rivals, the skill of the artist has in divers cases not paralleled the gifts of description of the author. [Illustration: FIG. 26.] The “monstrosus sus marinus,” or terrible sow of the sea, or more especially perhaps of Aldrovandus (fig. 27), will surely fully come up to everyone’s expectation of what a marine pig should be like. Catching a weasel asleep should be a comparatively easy task to circumventing sus marinus; it seems such a peculiarly wide-awake animal. Possibly in the struggle for existence in the watery depths its toothsome flesh may place it in jeopardy, and Nature may have bestowed upon it these numerous eyes to enable it to evade dragons and other foes having a penchant for pork; a rather unexpected addition to the various better-known examples of that comfortable doctrine for the well-to-do, the survival of the fittest. Purchas tells us of a fish called the Angulo or Hog-fish. “It hath,” he says, “as it were two hands, and a tail like a target, which eateth like pork, and whereof they make lard, and it hath not the savour or taste of fish. It feedeth on the grasse that groweth on the banks of the river and never goeth out; it hath a mouthe like the mozell of an ox, and there be of them that weigh five hundred pound a piece.” This is found, he tells us, in the River Congo.