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Human credulity is wonderfully resilient. In The Feejee Mermaid and Other
Essays in Natural and Unnatural History, Jan Bondeson tells tales of our wilful
desire to believe in basilisks laid by cockerels, learned pigs, numerate horses
and, of course, the Feejee Mermaid, a beast sewn together by Japanese fishermen
and displayed in Victorian Britain and the US to earnest scientific interest.
Published by Cornell University Press, £22.50, ISBN 0801436095.