174 ALLEN: NEW ENGLAND WHALEBONE WHALES. 



Jonah and the Whale. 



A question very frequently asked isf What kind of whale was it that swallowed Jonah? 

 If a whale actually did swallow the prophet, it was certainly none of the whalebone whales. 

 For in all these the gullet is far too small to permit of such a feat, and even in the larger spe- 

 cies is not greatly bigger than the diameter of a large man's fist. The Sperm Whale is probably 

 the only one of the existing whales that is capable of swallowing a man, but that it would 

 actually do so is very unlikely. 



According to the biblical account, Jonah had been called by the Lord to go to Nineveh 

 to preach to the people of their wickedness. But he, fearing to do so, embarked at Joppa on 

 a ship for Spain (Tarshish) and on the voyage was caught in a heavy storm. The ship's crew 

 believing Jonah to be the cause of the storm, at his bidding cast him into the sea. The trans- 

 lation of the Hebrew text reads (Jonah i: 17): "Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to 

 swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights." There 

 is thus nothing to show that a whale was intended. That it was a whale, however, is supposed 

 to be indicated by the passage in Matthew's Gospel (xii:40): "For as Jonas was three days 

 and three nights in the whale's belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights 

 in the heart of the earth." But the word translated as 'whale' is the Greek k^jtos which 

 rrieans a sea monster and might quite as well have been a shark or other large marine animal. 

 For those who prefer a hteral interpretation of the passage, therefore, the "great fish" may 

 have been a huge shark or even a Sperm Whale, while those who wish to take it figuratively, 

 may dodge the issue by supposing Jonah to have been cast off in a small boat which he likened 

 to the bowels of a sea monster, but which after three days. of rough weather eventually brought 

 him to land. Haupt (1907) adduces several instances of the occurrence of the Sperm Whale 

 in the Mediterranean, and suggests that the idea of a sea monster was given to the author of 

 the Book of Jonah by the local legends connected with Joppa, the port from which Jonah 

 embarked; for it was here that Andromeda was rescued from a sea monster by Perseus. 



What a pity, as someone has remarked, that so great a prophet should be chiefly remem- 

 bered for this trifling incident of his missionary journey! 



An Indian Totem. 



An interesting carved stone, apparently a piece of aboriginal art, has been described from 

 Seabrook, N. H., by Professor F. W. Putnam.^ It evidently represents,a cetacean, with rudely 

 indicated pectoral fins and horizontal tail. The absence of a dorsal fin might indicate that 

 it was meant to represent the Right Whale, but the mouth has more the form of a White 



1 Putnam, F. W. Bull. Essex Inst., 1873, vol. 5, p. Ill, figs. 



