The accompanying engraving of the well-known fish called by the Japanese the Noomo, is from a sketch obligingly furnished us by the writer of the following letter. It will be viewed with interest by all who remember the excitement produced some years since by the exhibition of a so-called mermaid at Barnum’s, in this city. The letter is as follows :
To the Editor of Harper’s Weekly:
Randolph, Macon College, Virginia,
December, 1859.
I am to-night in receipt of a letter from Dr. D. B. Phillips, surgeon in the United States Navy, steamer Mississippi, dated Hong Kong, Sept. 27, 1859, and containing the accompanying sketch from nature and description (with the request that I forward them in his same and with his compliments to you) for your Weekly, “of a very singular animal, found in Japan, and called the Noomo. The specimen from which this sketch was taken is dead and dried, and is eighteen inches in length. I have examined it [continues Dr. Phillips) with the utmost care, and am fully persuaded that it is genuine. It is universally and immediately recognized by the Japanese as a Noomo. The specimen is now in possession of Mr. T. King, master of the American schooner Wanderer, now at Shanghai, who purchased it at Kanagawa, Japan, for the sum of 130 ichiboos, equal to $40. Mr. King has since been offered $1500 for it by (as I understand) Mr. Bruce, the English Minister to China.” Vouching for the truth of all I assert, and leaving the question of classification to the naturalist, I remain,
Yours truly, William B. Carr.
Published February 4, 1860, issue of Harper’s Weekly