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Lumberwoods
U N N A T U R A L   H I S T O R Y   M U S E U M
“  M E R M A I D   R E P O R T S  ”
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Of Mermaids and Mermen
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THE SACRAMENTO DAILY RECORD-UNION — AUGUST 12, 1882
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OF MERMAIDS AND MERMEN.
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SEA PEOPLE ♢ MERMAIDS AND THEIR STRANGE HISTORY SKETCHED ♢ The Mermen and Merchildren for the Last Seven Hundred Years—
Strange Stories Indeed.
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    Why is it that we hear nothing of the mermaid in our day? Is it true that it has become extinct; that the voice of the siren no longer heard where it once led the unwary on treacherous shores; that sailors, wedded to the belief that it has its home in the sea, now search in vain for this curious creature? The prudent man hesitates to give a definite answer, for less than fifty years ago a school of mermaids was seen on the coast of Scotland, sad it is but sixty years since the last catch was made. Still there is the fact that in our day no mermaid has been seen. This has led to the belief that, like the dodo, the roc, the dragon and centaur, it is a thing of the past.
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THE SKEPTICAL MAN.
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    Even denies that the mermaid ever had an existence, and holds that the creature, half fish, half human, sprang from the brain of some wiseacre, who told stories and spun yarns for the marines. But the horse of Eocene Europe was “something between a Shetland pony and a pig, with three separate hoofs on each, of its feet,” and the semi-human man of the Miocene age encourages the belief that the connecting link between man and the ape may yet be found, perhaps in some fastness in the interior of Africa ; indeed, some travelers claim that in, that land of dark forest there is X
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