water; to
these succeeded notes that had a faint resemblance to a wild chorus
of a hundred human voices singing out of tune in deep bass.'

'In White's Voyage to Cochin China,' adds Mr. Joseph, 'there is as
good a description of this, or a similar submarine concert, as mere
words can convey: this the voyager heard in the Eastern seas. He
was told the singers were a flat kind of fish; he, however, did not
see them.'

'Might not this fish,' he asks, 'or one resembling it in vocal
qualities, have given rise to the fable of the Sirens?'

It might, certainly, if the fact be true. Moreover, Mr. Joseph does
not seem to be aware that the old Spanish Conquistadores had a myth
that music was to be heard in this very Gulf of Paria, and that at
certain seasons the Nymphs and Tritons assembled therein, and with
ravishing strains sang their watery loves. The story of the music
has been usually treated as a sailor's fable, and the Sirens and
Tritons supposed to be mere stupid manatis, or sea-cows, coming in
as they do still now and then to browse on mangrove shoots and
turtle-grass: {110} but if the story of the music be true, the myth
may have had a double root.

Meanwhile I see Hardwicke's Science Gossip for March gives an
extract from a letter of M. O. de Thoron, communicated by him to the
Academie des Sciences, December 1861, which confirms Mr. Joseph's
story. He asserts that in the Bay of Pailon, in Esmeraldos,
Ecuador, i.e. on the Pacific Coast, and also up more than one of the
rivers, he has heard a similar sound, attributed by the natives to a
fish which they call 'The Siren,' or 'Musico.' At first, he says,
he thought it was produced by a fly, or hornet of extraordinary
size; but afterwards, having advanced a little farther, he heard a
multitude of different voices, which harmonised together, imitating
a church organ to great perfection. The good people of Trinidad
believe that the fish which makes this noise is the trumpet-fish, or
Fistularia--a beast strange enough in shape to be credited with
strange actions: but ichthyologists say positively no: that the
noise (at least along the coast of the United States) is made by a
Pogonias, a fish somewhat like a great bearded perch, and cousin of
the Maigre of the Mediterranean, which is accused of making a
similar purring or grunting noise, which can be heard from a depth
of one hundred and twenty feet, and guides the fishermen to t