Sketch Magazine’s April Fool Supplement, 1908

It would seem that we must add yet another to the living races of mankind, and that those who go down to the sea in ships and traffic in distant waters may yet make discoveries that will create a sensation in the Western world. It is well known to students of the human body that man was at one time amphibious. It is said that traces of gills still exist in us, but it is left for the explorers of Nullepart Island to come upon a race of amphibians who, to all outward seeming, are men and women, although their hands and feet terminate in claws, and they have remarkably ugly projecting front teeth, together with moustaches that recall the domestic cat. As far as can be gathered from those who have examined these forgotten products of a lost civilization, they are equally happy in the water and on the land. They live upon fish, which they catch and eat raw. Their attitude towards strangers would seem to be not altogether aggressive, for they have submitted to the photographer, and have allowed their curious oral development to be studied by the officers of the ship that cast its anchor on the Island of Nullepart. In these days when Raisuli's warriors can draw a crowd to a London music-hall, there should be ample room in our city for these amphibians, who, if they were not quite comfortable in Leicester Square, might be accommodated at the "Zoo," to the great profit of the Zoological Society. While the scientific world will await with impatient interest the further story of these remarkable men and women, their discovery must needs give an added stimulus to the work of explorers in all parts of the globe. For in future no man can venture into untrodden ways without feeling that he has a fair chance of discovering not only the missing link, but other creatures of still more striking and modern interest. The greatest credit is due to the explorers who faced the undoubted difficulties and dangers that must be associated with the discovery of people who have for so many hundreds of years escaped the attention of our scientists.