Fig. 8 is a curious variant from the accepted notion of a mermaid. We have extracted it from one of the maps in Munster’s Cosmography. It is placed where in more modern charts Australia would be found, south of the islands of “Iaua” and “Porne,” names which the discrimination of our readers, who are at all accustomed to the transposition and substitution of letters in these old records, will no doubt readily resolve into Java and Borneo. One can easily imagine that the double tail, like the twin screws of an ironclad or ocean liner, might be of great assistance in steering, though some few millions of the lowlier inhabitants of the deep have nevertheless for ages got along very fairly without this special development.[29] [Illustration: FIG. 8.] We are told in mediæval story that a young man wandering along the rocky beach suddenly encountered a mermaid and seized her before she was able to reach the water. Her personal charms so worked upon his ardent temperament that he then and there proposed matrimony, and his suit was successful. Would that we could conclude in true story-book style, and declare that they lived happy ever after! After years of wedded bliss, a great longing came over her to see her own people once more, and, on the distinct understanding that the parting was to be a very short one, she embraced her husband and children and plunged into the sea and never reappeared, it being charitably assumed by those responsible for the story that the waters, like those of Lethe, washed away all remembrance of the past, and buried in oblivion the years she had spent so happily on earth.