Pontoppidan, in his “Natural History of Norway,” has his mermaid story, but it is too long to quote, and it is, moreover, needless to do so, as all these narratives follow much the same general lines. Captain John Smith, too, in his account of his expedition to America in 1614, has a similar experience to relate, and many narratives of like tenour might be found in various old writers, but we will now turn to one or two that not merely describe a mermaid and merman seen, but the creature actually captured. The following news item, from the _Scots Magazine_ for the year 1739, refers to a creature less piscine than the typical form, but coming sufficiently near it for inclusion. “They write from Vigo, in Spain, that some fishermen lately took on that coast a sort of monster, or merman, five feet and a half long from its foot to its head, which is like that of a goat. It has a long beard and moustachios, and black skin somewhat hairy, a very long neck, short arms, and hands longer than they ought to be in proportion to the rest of the body: long fingers like those of a man, with nails like claws; very long toes, joined like the feet of a duck, and the heels furnished with fins resembling the winged feet with which painters represent Mercury.” We get considerably nearer the ideal in the seven mermaids that were said to be entrapped by some fishermen in their nets off Ceylon in the year 1560. Of these, several Jesuits, and the physician to the Viceroy of Goa, professed to be eye-witnesses, and the latter having dissected them with great care asserts that both the internal and external structure resembled that of human beings. Of the piscine moiety he appears to make no mention.