Exhibition of a Merman.

On Saturday, notwithstanding the rain, upwards of 150 distinguished Fashionables visited the Exhibition of the Merman, among whom were -- His Royal Highness the Duke of Gloucester, the Dukes of Rutland and St. Albans and parties, the Marquis and Marchioness of Stafford and friends, the Marquises of Huntly and Cholmondeley and parties, the Countess Dowager of Cork and party, Lady Pulteney and party, Earl and Countess Howe and party, Earl of Falmouth and party, Lords L. Gower and A.  Hamilton and parties, &c. -- It has been announced that the Tickets dated the 19th will be received all this week.

Morning Post, June 21st, 1824.

From John Platts' 'The Manners and Customs of All Nations' (1827).

There is a Merman now exhibiting in a lodging-house in Piccadilly, and it has followed the Mermaid from Batavia. Both were manufactured by the Japanese; both were purchased (we believe unsuspectingly) by Captains of ships, and they are alike genuine. The Mermaid was the better piece of work of the two, and if exhibited, as we mentioned at the time, as an example of the mehanical ingenuity of the curiosity-caterers in Japan, would have been praiseworthy.

The head was that of the green African monkey, the arms those of the monkey and ape, the body and tail the salmon's, the skin of which was, when fresh taken off, in a gelatinous state, then dried, fined down with pummice-stone, gummed, and laid on over the dorsal bones (of a fish) so as to display the vertebrae, and finally exposed to the air and insects, so as to acquire the discolouration and perforation of antiquity.

The arms in the Mermaid being those of the ape and monkey, the nails being well cut out of birds' quills, and the junction of the neck to the monkey's skull being neatly inserted, the whole figure was capitally managed for a show. But not so this Merman, who is (probably as a distinction of his sex) constructed of ruder materials. The head is hideous; and if, like Cerberus, "op'ning his greedy grinning jaws," he does not "gape with three enormous mouths," he has one mouth bigger and more hideous than them all. The head is exactly that of the catfish, which is remarkable for its round head and projecting teeth (as in this figure); the distended and deformed face is an artificial mask, manufactured upon the fish-skull; but, the most clumsy contrivance of all, is the hair upon the head. Now, surely, a Merman or Mermaid ought, were it only in common couresy to the best authenticated accounts, ancient and modern, to have the green hair flowing in graceful curls down the shoulders, so as to permit the elegant action of throwing it aside when buffetting the "angry deep;" then we can understand Shakespeare's 
"Mermaid on a dolphin's back
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song."

But what will the reader think when he is informed that the Piccadilly Merman has a fine well-brushed head of hair, rising perpendicularly from the crown of the head in the newest Dandy fashion? It is soft and downy, resembling in length and texture the best muff fur - it is, in fact, nothing more nor less than the thinner coat of hair of the young fox or jackall, the colour almost that of the common animal, light reddish brown with a grey root. We imagine they are not much in the habit in Japan of seeing the seal or other marine animals which are tufted with hair, or they would have seen that such hair is long and fibrous, and from the nature of the element it lives in, always clinging along the skin, and in its growth and texture bearing no resemblance to that of land animals. It would have been just the same trouble to have manufactured the one hair as the other, and there is no doubt that the Japanese will improve upon the model.

The arms are entirely artificial, and in that respect the Merman is very inferior to the Mermaid. If anybody will take the trouble to observe the articulation of the shoulders, they will see a very imperfect imitation of the ball and socket, and then, again, the fingers at the palm of the hand; on the back, the shape and flexibility of the fingers is given, but no so in the inner side, there is no attempt made there to define the shape which gives to them the lateral or circular motion, or for lodging the tendons of what are called "the flexor muscles." These fingers could not bend - they want all the beautiful mechanism of anatomy: the Japanese must also improve in that science, before they send us another Merman. 

As to the shape of the rest of the body, it is that of the common salmon, or cod fish, the skin of which, a good full grown scaly one being procured, is exposed to the process of drying and darkening which we have already mentioned; it has not been fined down as in the Mermaid,  and therefore the wrinkles are coarser, and the vertebrae (the regular fish-bone) not so well displayed; the skin has, however, collapsed sufficiently upon the bones to give the full outline. The tail of the Mermaid is coiled up, to give the figure a capacity for moving perpendicularly in the water; through a mistake the Merman's finny extremity has only the common fish's tail, and is only capable of lateral motion: so that, supposing this figure to have life, the impulse of its motion must be horizontal - its face being thus downwards in the water, its eyes become useless, and deprived of exposure to the rays of light: perhaps the laws of nature differ, however, for Mermen. Let some intelligent Merman resolve this optical axiom.

This is our opinion of the Merman, but every spectator can judge for himself. We are not unaware of the danger of opposing "well-authenticated accounts" of Mermen  and Mermaids, from the "wilde or sauvage man in the sixt yeare of King John's raigne at Oreford, in Suffolk," caught by the fishermen "in theyr nettes," and a full account of whom will be found, and how he ultimately "fledded secretlye to the sea, and was never after seene nor hearde off," in The Gentleman's Magazine for 1762, down to the "syren or mermaid" shown "sporting about in the vessel of water at the fair of St. Germain's in the year 1758, (see The Gentleman's Magazine for 1759); but still we want to have better evidence of the fact.

We know there are affadavits in abundance to verify "sights" seen at moonlight upon the ocean; and a black man who waits upon the Merman in Piccadilly, has lately sworn before the Lord Mayor, first (and we are glad to hear it) that "he was educated in the Christian religion," and secondly, that about 20 years ago, he saw (not this animal, but) "an animal alive at Manilla, which was called a Mermaid," that it was kept at the Governor's house, but "its distressing cries" induced him, after three days' keeping, to put it back into the river, and restore it to its natural element.

It is somewhat singular, that it was left to the poor black man, after a lapse of years, to remember what must have been known at the time, according to his statement, throughout the whole Philippine islands, but which was not sooner brought to light; and yet we do know that Sir Jospeh Banks took great pains by an extensive correspondence throughout the world, to investigate all the rumours and affidavits of these Mermaids, and was, after a laborious inquiry, satisfied that their existence must be consigned to the imagination of poets.

The exhibitor of this Merman states the probable retreat of the Mermaids to be "in the most remote and fathomless depths of the sea." This is as it should be - Poets make ghosts "choose the darkest part o' th' grove," and say of "the ugly subjects" of night, that--
"Asham'd and fearful to appear,
They skreen their horrid shapes with the black hemisphere."
The witches of old, too, before "ill tongues" which are now upon the Mermaids were upon them, always performed their incantations by night. We agree in the propriety of having a "fathomless abyss" for the Mermen.

The exhibitor is quite shocked at the idea of being called upon to expose the figure to dissection, "merely to gratify idle wanton curiosity;" but he declares, "that so soon as a moderate sum is realized by the exhibition, he will offer it to the faculty, to add the final proof of its genuineness, and thus show that Mermaids and Mermen  form part of the creation." The time of this dissection will never come; in the interim, why do not some of the ingenious pupils of Mr. Brookes construct a Mermaid from some of the ample materials in his museum, which would bear dissection? Why are Captains of ships stopped in their voyages at Batavia, by the Japanese mermaid agents, and poor natives brought from the Philippine islands to make affidavits of what they saw 20 years ago, for a commodity, which if the experiment can be made, can, from our better knowledge of anatomy, be made cheaper and more perfect at home?

From The Times, June 26th, 1824.