There is annually held at St. Petersburg and Moscow what is called the frozen, or winter market, for the sale of provisions solidified by frost. In a vast open square, the bodies of many thousand animals are seen on all sides, piled in pyramidal and quadrangular masses: fish, fowl, butter, eggs, hogs, sheep, deer, oxen, all rendered solid by frost. The different species of fish are strikingly beautiful; they possess the lustre and brilliancy of colour which characterises the different species in a living state. Most of the larger kinds of quadrupeds are skinned, and classed according to their species; groups of many hundreds are piled upon their hind-legs, one against another, as if each were making an effort to climb over the back of his neighbour. The motionless, yet apparent animation of their seemingly struggling attitudes (as if they had died a sudden death), gives a horrid life to this singular scene of death. The solidity of the frozen creatures, is such, that the natives chop and saw them up, for the accommodation of the purchasers, like wood. These frozen provisions are the produce of countries very remote from each other. Siberia, Archangel, and still more distant provinces, furnish the merchandize which, during the severity of the frost, is conveyed hither on sledges. In consequence of the multitude of these commodities, and the short period allowed to the existence of the market, they are cheaper than at any other time of the year, and are, therefore, purchased in larger quantities, to be stored, as a winter stock. When disposed in cellars, they will keep, with care, for a considerable time during the cold season. All the provisions which remain, and are exposed to the temperate atmosphere, speedily putrify; but as the desertion of the frost is generally pretty well calculated, almost to a day, but little loss is suffered in this respect. The same advantage is taken of the cold in Canada, and all other countries, when the frost is sufficiently steady. Substances, so long as they are hard frozen, probably undergo no chemical change, of which the most striking proof was afforded by the body of an animal, probably antediluvian, being found imbedded in a mass of ice at the mouth of the Lena; but in the act of freezing, or of the subsequent thawing, some alteration is produced, which affects the nature of the substance. This may be either merely mechanical, from the particles of ice during their formation, tearing asunder and separating the fibres, or chemical, by destroying the intimate union of the constituents of the fluids, as in wine injured by having been frozen; or by causing new combinations, of which we have an example in the sweetness acquired by the potatoe.