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Half a century ago, Belgian Zoologist Bernard Heuvelmans first codified cryptozoology in his book On the Track of Unknown Animals.

The Centre for Fortean Zoology (CFZ) are still on the track, and have been since 1992. But as if chasing unknown animals wasn't enough, we are involved in education, conservation, and good old-fashioned natural history! We already have three journals, the largest cryptozoological publishing house in the world, CFZtv, and the largest cryptozoological conference in the English-speaking world, but in January 2009 someone suggested that we started a daily online magazine! The CFZ bloggo is a collaborative effort by a coalition of members, friends, and supporters of the CFZ, and covers all the subjects with which we deal, with a smattering of music, high strangeness and surreal humour to make up the mix.

It is edited by CFZ Director Jon Downes, and subbed by the lovely Lizzy Bitakara'mire (formerly Clancy), scourge of improper syntax. The daily newsblog is edited by Corinna Downes, head administratrix of the CFZ, and the indexing is done by Lee Canty and Kathy Imbriani. There is regular news from the CFZ Mystery Cat study group, and regular fortean bird news from 'The Watcher of the Skies'. Regular bloggers include Dr Karl Shuker, Dale Drinnon, Richard Muirhead and Richard Freeman.The CFZ bloggo is updated daily, and there's nothing quite like it anywhere else. Come and join us...

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Wednesday, April 14, 2010

MUIRHEAD`S MYSTERIES: SOME NOTES ON THE MERMAID PART ONE

These notes are taken from an old book The Broad Broad Ocean by someone I only know as `W. Jones` and they concern even older notes (from 1566 onwards) concerning the mermaid as being in reality the Dugong or a related animal:

But first I will mention the Stellerus (Stellers Sea Cow?):

“Only one species of the Stellerus – of the same genus as the two I have mentioned – has been known, about twenty-five feet in length, a native of the Polar seas, and never observed since the middle of the last (i.e 18th) century,so that it is supposed to be extinct. The characteristic features of this animal would lead one to suppose,also,that it may have contributed to the misconceptions about the mermaid.

Mr Rimbault, in “Notes and Queries”,remarks that the exhibition of strange fishes appears to have been at its height in the reign of Elizabeth. Shakespeare twice alludes to it: once in the “Winter`s Tale” ( Act IV .,Scene 3) ,where Autolycus says: “Here`s another ballad of a fish that appeared upon the coast on Wednesday, the fourscore of April, forty thousand fathoms above water, and sung this ballad against the hard hearts of maids. It was thought she was a woman, and was turned into a cold fish, for she would no exchange flesh with one that loved her. The ballad is very pitiful and true.” And again in “the Tempest” (Act II Scene 2) A printed notice, dated 1566, has for its title “The Description of a Rare or rather Most Monstrous Fishe, taken on the East Coast of Holland, the 17th November, Anno 1566, with a woodcut of the fish, and underneath the following lines:

“The workes of God,how great and strange they be!
A picture plaine,behold, heare you may see.”
(1)

To be continued….


1. W. Jones The Broad, Broad Ocean (date?) pp 265-266

Bob Dylan Idiot Wind

Someone`s got it in for me,they`re planting stories in the press
Whoever it is I wish they`d cut it out quick but when they will I can only guess
They said I shot a man named Gray and took his wife to Italy
She inherited a million bucks and when she died it came to me
I can`t help it if I`m lucky…

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