Early modern naturalists frequently relied on seafarers' tales of ocean voyages to augment their knowledge of sea life. The French surgeon Ambroise Paré's work included the figures of the monkfish and the bishop fish, which, apart from their fin-like arms and abundance of scales, resembled human clergyman. High-Inquisitor Dolores Umbridge might have referred to the mer-people and centaurs in Paré's book as "half-breeds"— creatures that were isolated, because of their hybrid forms, from the wizarding community.
