distance as they hovered over the blue sea. So
soft, so still, it had been the day before,--and where we now saw the
placid wave we had seen it then. Yet there had two lives gone out, as
suddenly as one quenches a lamp.

Thinking, but not speaking, we waited. The report of a pistol in the
house struck us to the heart. I believe we felt sure, both of us, of
what it must be. He had loved her so much! And now we were sure, that in
the tension of his grief, reason had given way. When we saw them next,
there were three where two had been, in the marble calm of death.

* * * * *

THE FORMATION OF GLACIERS.

The long summer was over. For ages a tropical climate had prevailed over
a great part of the earth, and animals whose home is now beneath the
Equator roamed over the world from the far South to the very borders of
the Arctics. The gigantic quadrupeds, the Mastodons, Elephants, Tigers,
Lions, Hyenas, Bears, whose remains are found in Europe from its
southern promontories to the northernmost limits of Siberia and
Scandinavia, and in America from the Southern States to Greenland and
the Melville Islands, may indeed be said to have possessed the earth in
those days. But their reign was over. A sudden intense winter, that was
also to last for ages, fell upon our globe; it spread over the very
countries where these tropical animals had their homes, and so suddenly
did it come upon them that they were embalmed beneath masses of snow and
ice, without time even for the decay which follows death. The Elephant
whose story was told at length in the preceding article was by no means
a solitary specimen; upon further investigation it was found that the
disinterment of these large tropical animals in Northern Russia and Asia
was no unusual occurrence. Indeed, their frequent discoveries of this
kind had given rise among the ignorant inhabitants to the singular
superstition already alluded to, that gigantic moles lived under the
earth, which crumbled away and turned to dust as soon as they came to
the upper air. This tradition, no doubt, arose from the fact, that, when
in digging they came upon the bodies of these animals, they often found
them perfectly preserved under the frozen ground, but the moment they
were exposed to heat and light they decayed and fell to pieces at once.
Admiral Wrangel, whose Arctic explorations have been so valuable to
science, tells us that the remains of these animals are hea