572 THE UNIVERSE. 



mony, written 500 years before the Christian era, it is said 

 that there exists an animal called Tin-Schu, or the mouse, 

 which hides itself, which lives in obscure caves, and is of 

 the size of a buffalo ; the least ray of sun or moonlight kills 

 it instantly. 



Klaproth relates that a similar fable is met with in Mant- 

 choo manuscripts. It is said there that this colossal mouse 

 attains the size of an elephant ! 



Amongst the most remarkable discoveries of recent times 

 must be ranked that of one of these elephants of the ex- 

 treme north, which was found by some fishermen in the ice 

 near the mouth of the Lena in 1799. Its flesh, enveloped 

 in a block of ice, had been preserved through many thou- 

 sands and perhaps millions of years ! The bears and dogs 

 flocked thither to make an antediluvian repast off it. Al- 

 most the whole skeleton of this animal was saved, and it 

 may now be seen in the museum of St. Petersburg. 



The human mind, face to face with all these gigantic 

 races, engulfed by the latest telluric convulsions, turns back 

 to search amid their remains, striving to penetrate into the 

 cause of these grand disasters. 



At one of the epochs nearest to us, when the whole sur- 

 face of the soil which we inhabit, lighted by a radiant sun, 

 was covered only with splendid forests and magnificent 

 prairies, in the midst of which wandered troops of ele- 

 phants, mastodons, and rhinoceroses, all at once the whole 

 of this exuberance of life disappeared in one common ship- 

 wreck. A horrible mantle of snow and ice covered all 

 northern Europe, and extended its folds even to the plains 

 of Germany. Overpowered by the cold, all those great 



