THE RICHMOND RIVER HERALD AND
NORTHERN DISTRICTS ADVERTISER — AUGUST 22, 1913
NORTHERN DISTRICTS ADVERTISER — AUGUST 22, 1913
STRANGE MONSTERS OF THE DEEP ♢ Mermaid and Merman.
Amongst the many curiosities culled by Mr. Mark Foy during an extensive motor trip through the north-east of Africa, there are two specimens which must rank as anachronisms, and which (says the “San”) instinctively carry the beholder back to the days when the land was peopled with pixies and elves, whilst the deep, as its correlative, had for denizens mermaids and mermen.
Though in this prosaic period the existence of these marine creatures has paid the toll to modern credulity, yet a visit to Medlow Bath will leave the visitor with much food for reflection. In a garage situated at the rear of Mr. Foy’s cottage are two preserved specimens of beings, anthropomorphic to just below the waist, and ichthyomorphic, or fish-shaped, thereafter. On inspection the visitor beholds a form lying on a mass of shavings. The form is certainly human to below the waist-line, whence it tapers off in approved fish fashion, quite in accordance with the illustration of mermaids in the books of our infancy. Measuring over six feet in stature, and of a dark mahogany hue, this denizen of the Libyan Sea—for it was at a seaport on the north-east coast of Africa that Mr. Foy acquired the lady in question—presents an inscrutable problem.
The cadaver, as such, seems to be absolutely entire, and is surmounted thy a head human in type, but relatively small in proportion to the size of the body. The features
