the mass of ice in which it lay, the soft parts were nearly entire. After the natives had fed their dogs for a long time with the mountainous hulk of flesh, Mr Adams of St Petersburg heard of it, and set out to see it. When he reached the spot, the skeleton was entire, with the exception of a fore-leg. The spine of the back, a shoulderblade, the pelvis, and the rest of the extremities, were still united by ligaments and a portion of the skin. The other shoulder-blade was found at some distance. The head was covered with a dry skin. One of the ears, in high preservation, was furnished with a tuft of hair, and the pupil of the eye was still discernible. The brain was found in the skull, but in a dry state. The neck was furnished with a long mane; and the skin, generally, was covered with black hairs and a reddish sort of wool. Of the quantity of hair and bristles that had been on the body, some idea may be formed from the fact, that thirty pounds of them were gathered from the ground, where the dogs, in eating the flesh, had dropt them. The tusks were more than nine feet long, and the head, without the tusks, weighed more than four hundred pounds. Altogether, the skeleton of this mammoth was about the size of a large elephant's.

Skeletons similar to this have been found in abundance on the shores of the Arctic Sea. They differ in several minute points of structure from the common elephant, and on this circumstance the most rational explanation of their being found in such cold climates is founded. This explanation is, that the mammoth elephant was of a species fitted to be a native of cold countries; and of this reasoning the different structure and the long thick hair are held to be proofs. Whether this may be the case or not, it seems certain that the mammoth's existence must have been very recent, and must have approached closely to, if not encroached on, the era of man.

Within the last few years, extensive researches have been made in the Tertiary strata of India, and some interesting results have been made partially known. In these strata are found Pachyderms similar to those of the Paris basin; as also species allied to the pig, camel, giraffe, elephant, and horse. Amongst several other new ruminant animals, is one which has been called the Sivatherium, and which must have surpassed even the rhinoceros in size. The cranium is of a huge irregular shape, presenting in front a nasal process of bone for the support of a proboscis or thick upper lip; likewise two pairs of prominences further back, from which horns must have proceeded. The sivatherium was a ruminant approaching in character to the Pachyderms. But even this huge creature sinks into insignificance beside another of the Indian Tertiary animals, a tortoise, of which many remains have been found, and which from these would appear to have been identical with existing species of land habits, but the carapace or back-plate, of which reached the extraordinary length of twenty feet. The Megalochelys Atlas, as this animal has been called,

would greatly exceed the largest of living land animals in bulk: with the head and tail included in the measurement, it could not be much less than thirty feet long. Dr Falconer, who discovered this singular animal, thinks it may have survived as a species till the peopling of India with human beings, and he thinks it may account for some of the tales of Hindu mythology, particularly that which represents the world as supported by an elephant standing on the back of a tortoise.

A few bones of monkeys, the family of animals approaching nearest to the human species, have been found in various parts of the world-at Kyson, near Woodbridge, in Surrey; in South America, and in India-all of them in Tertiary strata. As yet, no remains of human beings have been discovered in any similar situation. And hence it is inferred that the formation of the rocks terminating with the uppermost Tertiaries had been completed before man came into existence.

Scattered over the north of Europe and America-not only on the level dales, but on the top of the highest hills—are large blocks of stone. The rocks are moreover grooved, as by the passing of some heavy body over them in one continued course. Vast accumulations of clay, mostly unfossiliferous, but occasionally with Arctic shells in it, are also found. This is known to the Scottish agriculturist as the till, and to geologists is a fertile subject of dispute, under the name of the boulder-clay. The generally received explanation is, that at one time there was an age of floods, when large tracts of country, before that dry land, were covered with water, destroying the animals and plants then living; succeeded by a cold period, when glaciers ground down from the valleys in the high mountains and hills, then mere islands in this glacial sea, and icebergs floated over the submerged land, grinding the rocks, and discharging their loads of earth and rock over the places where these are now found, as they do in the Arctic regions at the present day. The earth began to rise from the waters, and a warmer period succeeded; another distribution of land took place, and the present forms of animal and vegetable life suitable to these conditions were established. The successive risings of the submerged land are exhibited by the ancient sea-beaches which are found all over our own and other countries, as described by Dr Chambers in his Ancient Sea-Margins. The same submergence and upheaval is still going on, and though we are accustomed to talk of the 'stable land' and the 'unstable sea,' the contrary is true. There is probably no portion of the world which is not imperceptibly sinking or rising, though this has been more noted in northern countries than elsewhere. Celsius noticed, in the middle of last century, that former seaport towns on the Gulf of Bothnia were inland, and fishing-places deserted, because there was no water in the harbours.

It has since been found that the rise of land extended over a wide

area, at the rate of five feet in a century, though at Stockholm it was only a few inches. At other places there is a depression, as at Scania, in Sweden. In 1799, Linnæus measured the distance of a stone from the sea, which in 1836 was a hundred feet nearer. There is also evidence of an alternation of sea and land at long intervals. Whilst digging a canal in 1819, the workmen passed through sixty feet of marine strata. They then came on fishermen's huts of the rudest description, containing the remains of fires, charred food, vessels with wooden plugs instead of nails, wood cut by some kind of hatchet, &c.—all betokening a state of things prior to the introduction of iron. Therefore we must conclude that the sea had come over the huts, and after the sixty feet of sand, shells, &c. had been deposited, they were elevated (when, we cannot say) to their present level. On the west coast of Greenland, there is a gradual sinking of the land. Huts are now under water, and the frames which the Esquimaux used to support their kayaks on are out in the sea. Yet there seems to have been a rise of the coast of Greenland previous to this-marine shells of living species being now found high above the sea-level.

The caves found in England and elsewhere containing the bones of hyenas, &c., may be referred to the beginning of the glacial period, or at latest to the period immediately preceding that age. In the valley of the Somme in France, and in other places, peat is found containing Celtic implements imbedded in it, and below this peat (which is of great thickness, and must have taken a very great length of time to form) are found gravels of a very much older date, containing bones of the mammoth, &c., with flint implements of an exceedingly primitive type. Sir Charles Lyell, who has investigated the whole subject, considers that these and other similar facts prove that man was contemporary in Europe with two species of extinct elephant, two species of extinct rhinoceros, at least one species of hippopotamus, the cave bear, cave lion, and cave hyena, beside various other species of extinct quadrupeds. 'While these were

slowly passing away, the musk buffalo, the reindeer, and other Arctic species which have survived to our times, were retreating northward from the valley of the Thames and the Seine to their present more Arctic haunts.'*

At that time, England must have been joined to the continent of Europe, and the British Islands to one another. Reasoning on such data, many eminent naturalists are beginning to entertain strong conviction that the date of man's advent on the globe is much more remote than is usually supposed; and though we must modify our views to a great extent, yet we must remember that the evidence laid before us is only tentative, and that we must wait patiently for the unravelling of the almost daily discoveries bearing on the subject, before we hastily cast aside the faith of ages.

* Lyell's Antiquity of Man, p. 375.

HE war in La Vendée is as interesting a struggle as any which occurs in history. Similar in many respects to that of the Scottish Highlanders under Montrose at the time of our own revolution, it is precisely the kind of struggle that will interest all who have any strong patriotic feeling, any pity for the crushed and injured, any admiration for courage and daring, any regard for the noble men whom God has made unfortunate.

In the year 1789-90, the revolutionary spirit had gone abroad over all France, except La Vendée, a district in the western part of the kingdom, adjoining the Atlantic Ocean on one side, and the Loire on another. The interior of this district, which we have sketched in the accompanying map, was called the Bocage, or thicket, and the strip on the sea-coast was styled the Marais, or marsh. The Bocage, plenteously covered with hedgerows and brushwood, formed a pretty rural scene, enriched with farm-houses, villages, churches, and old-fashioned châteaux, or residences of landed gentry.

At the period to which we allude, the population of La Vendée consisted in a great measure of small farmers, a prosperous and contented race, living under a body of kind landlords. According to all accounts, the relation between the landlord and his tenants was all that philanthropists could now desire. Nowhere had the aristocratic principle shone with so beneficent a lustre. The proprietors, most of whom belonged to the ranks of the nobility, were

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constantly meeting, chatting, and laughing with their tenants, and, if need be, lending them their advice and assistance. The landlord's

family went to all the weddings, and on the occasion of every festival, all the young people on the estate came to dance in the courtyard of the château. Returning from the gaieties of Paris, the gentry were careful to resume the primitive Vendéan habits. Fond of fieldsports, they invited all classes to join them; at the time and place appointed, they all met with their guns-farmers, peasants, and proprietors together-each having his assigned place in the hunt. In this manner, by frequent out-door amusements and occupations, the Vendéans were physically a strong and hardy race.

With substantially nothing to complain of, attached to their landlords, their religion, and the old forms of government, the people of La Vendée viewed the revolutionary outbreak with distrust, and shrunk from taking any part in the movement. They therefore remained tranquil until 1791, when the Constituent Assembly decreed that the clergy, like other public functionaries, should take the civic oath. The penalty for refusing was the loss of livings. Many thousands refused, and hence arose a distinction between the Constitutional and Nonconforming clergy. In the place of those who were ejected from their livings, others with a more convenient conscience were appointed. The clergy of La Vendée generally refused to take the oath; and, countenanced by the people, openly retained their parishes in spite of the government; an act of contumacy which could not long escape punishment. On the 29th of November 1791, a decree was accordingly passed peremptorily ordering all the priests who had not yet taken the civic oath to do so within a week, under pain of forfeiting the pensions they still held, of expulsion from the district if necessary, and, in certain cases, of imprisonment. The local authorities were stringently required to see this decree put in force, and they were empowered to put down every insurrection