sand was discovered, about four feet deep and as wide as the mouth of a half-barrel, whence five or six dozen white eggs were taken out; the eggs were of different sizes, the largest the size of a duck’s egg.  On the morning of the 10th of this month, at half-past five o’clock, she was discovered by Mr. Crow, on the beach, near the spot where she first came up; he gave the alarm, when all the neighbors assembled and got her turned on her back.  She took twelve men to haul her about two hundred yards.  I went and measured her, and found her dimensions as follows:  from head to tail, six feet six inches; from the outer part of her fore fin to the other end” (to the tip of the other?), “nine feet two inches; the circumference round her back and chest, seven feet nine inches; circumference of her neck, three feet three inches; the widest part of her fore fins, eighteen inches; her hind fins, two feet four inches in length.  Her back is formed like a round top of a trunk, with small white bumps in straight lines, resembling the nails on a trunk; her color is variegated like the rainbow” (probably the living skin displayed opaline reflections); “there is no shell on her back, but a thick skin, like pump-leather.”

Some years since, a gigantic specimen came ashore at Lynn beach, where for a long time it formed an object of the greatest curiosity.  It was over eight feet in length, and weighed nearly twenty-two hundred pounds.  Instead of definite scales, as in other turtles, it had a shell composed of six plates, which formed longitudinal ridges extending from the head to the tail; the eye-openings were up and down, instead of lengthwise; the bill was hooked; and so many remarkable characteristics did it possess that many believed it to be a strange nondescript, and not a turtle.

It would not be surprising to find that such a creature was descended from a remarkable ancestry; and, following it up, we are led far into the early history of the later geological times, when all life seems to have attained its maximum growth; in fact, it was an era of giants.  The map-maker of to-day would be astonished if confronted with the coast-line of that early time.  The coast-country from Nova Scotia to Yucatan was all under water, and what are now our plains and prairies was a vast sea, that commenced where Texas now is and extended far to the northwest.  Even now the old coast-line can be traced.  We follow it along from Arkansas to near Fort Riley, on the Kansas River, then, extending eastward, it traverses Minnesota, extending into the British possessions to the head of Lake Superior, while its western shores are lost under the waters of the Pacific Ocean.  Such was this great Cretaceous sea, in whose waters, with hundreds of other strange creatures, lived the ancestor of our leather tortoise.  The ancient sea, however, disappeared; the land rose and surrounded it; the great forms died and became buried in the sediment, and finally the water all evaporated, leaving the bottom high and dry,—­an ancient grave-yard, that can be visited on horseback or by the cars.