A MONSTER MASTODON. 557 
would have existed. If the process was irreversible this condensation must have 
gone on, until final stagnation was reached. 
Yet the record of the skies tells a different story, since it speaks of spheres 
which are hoary with their weight of ages, and of numerous other masses which 
have but recently drawn together out of the matter of space. Whence came the 
latter ? It is impossible to conceive that they delayed the commencement of 
their evolution until after other spheres had gained their mature stage, nor can 
we imagine that the diffused matter left from the first period of evolution was 
sufficient in quantity and suitable in condition to set in train such an extensive 
second evolution as the story of the nebulse indicates. 
The facts strongly favor some reversal of the original process, and indicate 
that these new-forming nebute are built up from the diffused material of spheres 
which had gained the ultimate phase of their condensation, and then through 
the operation of some energy, of whose character and whose laws of action we 
are ignorant, reversed their condensing process and become again dispersed as 
diffused matter through space. In this manner the requisite substance for a new 
process of nebular and spheral evolution would be provided. Whether such a 
dispersal of the matter of older spheres, if it took place, did so immediately, 
through some grand disrupting convulsion, or gradually, through some slow and 
unavoidable reversal of the processes of natural energy, is of course beyond the 
reach of conjecture. But it can be affirmed with some reason that the conditions 
of matter visible in the depths of space, and the logical conclusions as to the 
conditions of invisible matter, indicate that the universe is not a clock which is 
destined to run down and end in eternal cessation of life and motion, but a self- 
winding clock, a perpetual-motion time-piece of eternity, which can never cease 
to run, but whose springs of motion, when they have almost lost their force, shall 
again, through some natural law, as yet unknown to us, regain their primitive 
energy, and again set the wheels of evolution in play with all their pristine force. 
ARCHEOLOGY. 
A MONSTER MASTODON. 
Mr. Herschfelder, American Vice Consul here, and a well-kown archaeologist, 
was fortunate enough to secure some stone tablets with well defined hieroglyph- 
ics from Muskoka. He had scarcely settled himself down to business again when 
he was off on another expedition, this time to a place in the vicinity of Wood- 
stock, where he has been digging and delving for the past four or five days. 
The story of his expedition is an interesting one. Twelve years ago, while some 
laborers were engaged in digging a drain on the farm of George Crumble, about' 
five miles east of Woodstock, and in the township and county of Oxford, one of 
