The use of the _cræft_, for a vessel, like the modern, is to be found in the _Andreas_ (v. 500.), a composition probably of the eleventh century. The conclusion points to troubled and late times of the Anglo-Saxon rule, when the church missed the reverence which had been paid to it in periods of peace and prosperity. I have said enough to show that this document cannot rank in accuracy or truthful value with the Rectitudines or the LL. of Hen. I. One word more. What is the meaning of _burh-geat_? _Burh_ I can understand; authorities abound for its use as expressing the _manoir_ of the Anglo-Saxon _thegn_. The "geneates riht" (_Rectitudines_) is "bytlian and burh hegegian." The _ceorls_ of Dyddanham were bound to dyke the hedge of their lords' _burh_ ("Consuetudines in Dyddanhamme," _Kemb_, vol. iii. App. p. 450.): "And dicie gyrde burh heges." H. C. C. THE WHALE OF JONAH. Eichhorn (_Einleitung in das Alte Testament_, iii. 249.) in a note refers to a passage of Müller's translations of Linnæus, narrating the following remarkable accident:-- "In the year 1758, a seaman, in consequence of stormy weather, unluckily fell overboard from a frigate into the Mediterranean. A seal (_Seehund_, not _Hai_, a shark) immediately took the man, swimming and crying for help, into it wide jaws. Other seamen sprang into a boat to help their swimming comrade; and their captain, noticing the accident, had the presence of mind to direct a gun to be fired from the deck at the fish, whereby he was fortunately so far struck (_so getroffen wurde_) that he _spit_ out directly the seaman previously seized in his jaws, who was taken into the boat alive, and apparently little hurt. "The seal was taken by harpoons and ropes, and hauled into the frigate, and hung to dry in the cross-trees (_quære_). The captain gave the fish to the seaman who, by God's providence, had been so wonderfully preserved; and he made the circuit of Europe with it as an exhibition, and from France it came to Erlangen, Nuremburg, and other places, where it was openly shown. The fish was twenty feet long, with fins nine feet broad, and weighed 3,924 lbs., and is illustrated in tab. 9. fig. 5.; from all which it is very probably concluded, that this kind was the true Jonas-fish." Bochart concurs in this opinion. Herman de Hardt (_Programma de rebus Jonæ_, Helmst. 1719) considers that Jonah stopt at a tavern bearing the sign of the whale. Lesz (_Vermischte Schriften_, Th. i. S. 16.) thinks that a ship with a figure-head (_Zeichen_) of a whale took Jonah on board, and in three days put him ashore; from which it was reported that the ship-whale had vomited (discharged) him. Eichhorn has noticed the above in his Introduction to the Old Testament (iii. 250.). An anonymous writer says that _dag_ means a fish-boat; and that the word which is translated _whale_, should have been _preserver_; a criticism inconsistent with itself, and void of authority.