A sailor gives the following description of sleeping _inside_ a whale; not, however, quite as Jonah may have done. He says:(50)—“We were on a little expedition in the long‐boat one voyage, and we had to encamp for the night with as much comfort as our scant means would afford. The shore was terrible for its wildness and desolation—it was indeed lonely, sad, and sandy, but what was strange and welcome, was, great carcases of whales, stranded like wrecks on the far‐reaching shore, in some cases the backbone holding together like a good keel and the great ribs still round, giving you an idea of an elongated hogshead without the staves. We landed for the night, unbent our sails and stretched them over the bleached ribs of a whale’s skeleton, and after supper took a comfortable sleep under the most curious roof‐tree I ever rested under.” This was on the north‐west coast of Africa; and the sailor came to the conclusion that whales come ashore to die. “And to my mind,” says he, “it is as poetical as it is welcome. I like to think of these mighty travellers in the mighty deep hugging the shore when the fires of life burn low, and the mighty waves, their playmates from their childhood, giving their last lift up on the beach!” And now for that great mythical or actual animal the sea‐serpent. For ages an animal of immense size and serpentine form has been believed to inhabit the ocean, though rarely seen. A strong conviction of its existence has always prevailed in Norway and the fiords, where it has been reported to have been frequently seen. It is also said that the coasts of New England have been frequently visited by this marine monster many times during this century. Bishop Pontoppidan, who, about the middle of the eighteenth century, wrote a history of Norway, his native land, collected a quantity of testimonies as to its occasional appearance. Among other evidence he mentions that of Captain de Ferry, of the Norwegian Navy, who saw the serpent, while in a boat rowed by eight men, near Molde, in August, 1774. A declaration of this was made by the captain and two of the crew before a magistrate. The animal was described as of the general form of a serpent stretched on the surface in receding coils or undulations, and the head, which resembled that of a horse, elevated some two feet out of the water. In the summer of 1846 many respectable persons stated that in the vicinity of Christiansand and Molde they had seen the marine serpent. The affidavits of numerous persons were given in the papers, which, with some discrepancies in minute particulars, agree in testifying that an animal of great length (from about fifty to a hundred feet) had been seen at various times, in many cases more than once. All agreed that the eyes were large and glaring; that the body was dark‐brown and comparatively slender; and that the head, which for size was compared to a ten‐gallon cask, was covered with a long spreading mane.