MOSCOW. 
they have then been preserved, like the fishes 
and other articles of food brought annually to 
the winter markets of Petersburg. Those dug 
in the southern parts of Siberia, are found either 
soft and decayed, or mineralized by siliceous 
infiltrations, and metalline compounds. What 
a source of wondrous reflection do these dis- 
coveries open ! If frost alone have preserved 
them, they were frozen in the moment of their 
deposit; and thus it appears, that an animal 
peculiar to the warmest regions of the earth 
must, at some distant period, have been ha- 
bituated to a temperature which it could not 
now endure for an instant. In the epistolary 
mummery bartered by the late Empress Ca- 
therine with Voltaire, these animal remains 
are brought forward to gratify his infidelity 1 2 * : 
and it is difficult to say who appears most 
abject in the eyes of posterity; Catherine, 
condescending to gratify the scepticism of a 
man she inwardly despised ; or the arch-infidel 
himself, having nearly completed his eighth 
decade 5 , sometimes by insinuation, and often 
(1) “ Mais une chose qui dOnontre, je pense, quc le monde cst mi 
peu plus vieux quc nos nourrices nc nous le disent, c’cst qu on trouve 
dans lc Nord de la Sibdrie, i plusieurs toises sous terre, des osseinens 
dV'li'-ptiatiS qui depuis tort long-temps n’habitent plus ces contr^es. 
Lett, de V Impiratrxce a M. de Voltaire, dans les (Euores de Volt, 
tome lxvii. p, 201. Edit. 1785. 
(2) “ J’aurai k la v^ritd soixante et dix-sept ans, et je n’ai pas la 
vigueur d’un Turc ; mais je ue vois pas ce qui pourrait m’einpCcher 
