roused, they may be trusted to any extent.
Sahiman, one of Mr. Layard's guiding-
chiefs, tracked some camels for six weeks,
that had been stolen from the encampment
while under his protection. He felt his
honour involved, and would have spent a
lifetime in recovering the lost property, rather
than have it said that his guest or friend had
been robbed while under his charge. At last,
he recovered the camels, after infinite trouble
and exertion, and brought them back to Layard,
who happened to be absent at the time,
neither waiting nor wishing for a reward. And
Suttum, that brave and beautiful Ion of the
Hearth, was often sent across the desert with
five or six hundred pounds of money— his only
reward being a silk dress or two, with now
and then a camel-load of rice or corn for his
family. Once a Bedouin came all the way
alone from the neighbourhood of Bagdad to
pay the balance of a wool account, amounting
to three or four shillings, and would not
accept any reward whatever. On the whole,
a race more gallant, daring, generous, loving,
and trustworthy, when once placed in the
position of friends and protectors, is not to be
found anywhere. And as the boundless freedom
of the Bedouin life gives it a charm, no
other state of existence possesses in spite of
all its privations, so, with all the faults of the
Bedouin character, its affectionate sincerity
and princely generosity give it a claim on
one's respect and love not easily accorded to
men more civilised, but perhaps less virtuous.
Men who, as the noble Hatem, would slay a
priceless mare, in times of famine, to feed
some stranger guests that chanced to come
to the tents— who, as Suttum, would carry
money that would enrich them for life, across
the desert, where the owner of that gold
could never track them, and where they
might defy pursuit or detection, yet carry it
as surely as if guarded by an army— such
men as these are not barbarians, nor is that
code of morals to be despised which
gives such practical results.

                          CHIPS.

     SENSIBLE NEWS OF A SEA-SNAKE.

IT is comfortable to get some account from
a trustworthy naturalist of a sea-serpent
that is neither a bunch of sea-weed nor a
bunch of lies. Mr. Peach, a gentleman
whose name is familiar to all working men
of science, as possessing the property of an
accurate and intelligent observer, tells us
that a few weeks ago a specimen of a singular
and rare serpentine fish was cast on shore in
Sinclair's Bay, a few miles from the town of
Wick in Scotland. This water monster
certainly is a very fine sea-snake, though not
perhaps the well-known sea-serpent of
fiction.

When it was brought in it had been much.
mangled and cut about by the fishermen; who
styled it a Ciel-lonin— a name very apt to be
corrupted into Sea Lion by those who have
caught, from time to time, only glimpses of
the head, which displays a sort of mane.

Only a few specimens of the animal have
hitherto been described as having been
found on the British shores. Those which
have been described were all of considerable
size; but the last caught is the monster among
monsters. His length is fifteen feet six inches,
from the eyes only, to not quite the tip of the
tail. The two ends of him are immeasurable,
because the tail has been much injured,
its tip broken off, while the whole of the
head up to the eye has been knocked to pieces,
partly by the fishermen and partly by the
creature itself in its death struggles. Another
foot might therefore be added to the
measurable length. The greatest depth of his
body is one foot two inches, and it would
require a skewer three and a half inches long
to transfix him breadthwise in the thickest
part. His eyes are perfect, an inch and a half
across, having the pupil dark and iris silvery:
these eyes are so placed, near the top of the
head, that they would be conspicuous objects
while the creature swam upon the surface of
the water. The head, as before said, is
mutilated so much that little can be said about
it. There are, visible upon it, stumps of a
cluster of spine-like fins, well adapted for the
support of a long crest, which probably
existed until a boat-hook dealt about the
snake's head its destructive blows. Upon the
ridge of his back, extending along the whole
length, is the dorsal fin; but the top part of it
is nearly all rubbed off. The skin is of a
beautiful silvery colour, with fine dark bands
that pass down from head to tail. The
vertebral column— is not of bone at all, but
gristly, and not three quarters of an inch
across. When cut through it shows merely as
a filon filled with a jelly-like substance.

As to the actual nature of this rare visitor,
all competent authorities agree that it is a
large example of the gymnetrus, a visitor
known better by the name of riband-lath or
deal-fish.

We do not intend to enter into a
debate about the sea-serpent. That would
be cruel to our readers. Let us, however,
say, that against the possibility of its existence
one of the strongest arguments used was,
that if such animals were in being, some
portion of their skeletons, especially bits
of the backbone, would have been thrown
ashore. Now here we have a creature of a
snake-like form, sixteen feet in length; that
is to say, two feet longer than any similar sea
monster of the snake kind, before found. It is
crowned with a long pendulous tuft on the
back of the head, which would well represent
the mane which sea-serpent seers have always
described. Swimming as the fish does on its
edge, and not flat like a sole or halibut, the
extreme thinness compared with the depth
would give it great rapidity of motion, and