this journal, and whether he advised me to continue it?

، Certainly I do, Bertha, because I am sure it is highly satisfactory to your mother, not only to know what you are doing, but to trace the progress of your mind. Besides, though I suspect that no young lady can write a great deal without introducing a little desultory matter, yet, from the pages you have occasionally shown me, I am sure there is much in your journal that may be advantageous to Marianne. Indeed I am glad you mentioned it, for I think it forms no bad illustration of the unconnected manner in which knowledge presents itself in every-day life; and if our present conversation finds a place in it, tell your sister, from me, to attend to what I have said about discrimination, and to try her skill in selecting, and classifying in her memory, the many useful topics on which you have touched.

'The benefit to yourself of committing to paper the detailed knowledge that you acquire is quite another question. As a help to which the memory may refer, I am inclined to think that it is injurious; except in so far as the time occupied in writing forces one to dwell sufficiently on the ideas, to perceive their analogy with others. But you may, I think, make a common-place book really useful, by stating your general impressions of the books you read,

and of the discussions you hear; and by sometimes recording those passing thoughts which suggest themselves to every reflecting person. By thus frequently marking the state of your mind, you can hereafter judge of its progress; and you will be able to correct the prejudices. which may have impeded its steady improvement.'

29th. I begged of my uncle to describe some more of the remarkable animals that have been found in a fossil state. He readily complied; and as it is possible that I may one day have an opportunity of seeing some of these curious petrifactions in the museums, I carefully noted what he told us.

One of those huge oviparous quadrupeds to which the name Monitor has been given, was found at Maestricht, in soft limestone rock, mixed with flints. The skeleton was about twenty-four feet long; the head four feet; and, from the great breadth and strength of the tail, the animal is supposed to have inhabited the sea.

There are but two living species of sloths known; and two fossil animals have been found, which seem nearly allied to them. One of these animals, the megalonix, is of the size of an ox, and was first discovered in a limestone cave in Virginia. The other, the megatherium, is as large as a rhinoceros: its remains have been

found only in South America; and it is a curious fact, that, greatly as these animals exceed the sloth and the ant-eater in size, they not only appear to belong to the same family, but their bones are found only in America, the very country inhabited by sloths and ant-eaters.

The gigantic fossil elks of Ireland are also an extinct species: they are found under bogs, or in deep marl-pits; and generally in an erect position, as if the herd had been suddenly overwhelmed by the mass in which they are imbedded, while it was in a fluid state. The distance between the tips of the horns of a skull, now in the museum of the Royal Society of Dublin, is eleven feet and ten inches; and I have heard that a still larger specimen has been discovered in that country.

The skull of the fossil ox, or buffalo of Siberia, cannot be identified with any of the known species of this animal; and it is conjectured to have lived at the same time with the fossil elephant and rhinoceros, as it is found in the same alluvial tracts.

Two distinct species of elephant are at present known-the African and the Asiatic; but only one fossil species has hitherto been discovered, which has been called the mammotha name borrowed from the Russians. Though differing from both the existing species, principally in the structure of the teeth, it more

nearly resembles the Asiatic than the other. The remains of this animal have been found also in the alluvial soil around London, and in a great many parts of England, and even in this county. In Ireland also, in Sweden and Norway, and in almost every country of Europe, they have been discovered. Humboldt found their teeth in South America; the North American naturalists have also found them; and lately, Lieutenant Kotzebue, the Russian navigator, perceived them in an iceberg near Behring's Straits. But it is in Asiatic Russia that they occur in the greatest abundance: there is scarcely a river there with alluvial banks, that does not afford remains of the mammoth, and generally accompanied by marine shells.'

My uncle then was so good as to go to the library for an account of a fossil elephant that was found in a state of perfect preservation, though its great antiquity is evident, from the whole race to which it had belonged being now extinct. The account was drawn up by the celebrated M. Cuvier, from observations made on the spot by Mr. Adams.

In the year 1799, a portion of an ice-bank, near the mouth of the river Lena, in the north of Siberia, having fallen down, a Tungusian fisherman perceived a strange shapeless mass projecting from the remaining cliff of ice, but at a height far beyond his reach. The next year

it was a little more exposed, by the dissolving of the ice; and, in the end of the summer of 1801, he could distinctly see that it was the frozen carcass of some enormous animal. He con

tinued to watch it till the year 1804, when the ice having melted earlier, and to a greater degree than usual, the carcass became entirely disengaged, and fell down from the ice-cliff on an accessible part of the shore. The fisherman carried away both the tusks; and so well had the ice preserved the ivory, that he sold them for fifty roubles. This circumstance having come to the knowledge of Mr. Adams in 1806, he travelled to the spot to examine the animal, but he found the body greatly mutilated; much of the flesh had been taken away by the natives to feed their dogs, and one of the fore legs had been carried off, probably by the white bears. The rest of the skeleton was entire; the head was uninjured-even the pupil of the eye was still distinguishable; and the ears were well covered with bristly hair. A large quantity of the skin remained, which was extremely thick and heavy; and there was a long black mane on the neck, the stiff bristles of which were more than a foot in length.

'About thirty pounds weight of reddish-brown bristly hair was collected in the mud, into which it had been trampled by the bears while devouring the carcass, as well as a quantity of