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 respect like a French woman, except that she did not speak. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, an English ship, a hundred and fifty leagues from land, in the Greenland seas, discovered a flotilla of sixty or seventy little skiffs, in each of which was a triton, or sea man: at the approach of the English vessel the whole of them, seized with simultaneous fear, disappeared, skiffs and all, under the water, as if they had been a human variety of the nautilus. The illustrious Don Feijoo has preserved an authentic and well-attested story of a young Spaniard, named Francis de la Vega, who, bathing with some of his friends in June, 1674, suddenly dived under the sea and rose no more. His friends thought him drowned; they were plebeians and pious Catholics; but a philosopher might very legitimately have drawn the same conclusion. THE REVEREND MR LARYNX Nothing could be more logical. MR ASTERIAS Five years afterwards, some fishermen near Cadiz found in their nets a triton, or sea man; they spoke to him in several languages-- THE REVEREND MR LARYNX They were very learned fishermen. MR HILARY They had the gift of tongues by especial favour of their brother fisherman, Saint Peter. THE HONOURABLE MR LISTLESS Is Saint Peter the tutelar saint of Cadiz? (_None of the company could answer this question, and_ MR ASTERIAS _proceeded_.)