I should be glad to quote more, but this is enough to account for the circumstances I have myself noted, and to explain also, I think, the vast deposit of mud which forms the prairies of the Western States, and of the Canadian North-West; which has its counterpart in the European prairie countries of Moldavia and Wallachia. But the Duke appears to me to overlook the circumstance, that the vast accumulation of animal remains in Siberia, mostly of southern varieties, to which he refers, must have been swept there, not by an upheaval, but by a depression in the northern hemisphere, and a corresponding rise in the southern, whence all these mammoths, lions and tigers, are supposed to have been swept. To account for their present elevated position, a second convulsion restoring the depressed parts to their original altitude, must apparently have occurred--at least that is my unscientific conclusion. It would seem that we ought to look for similar accumulations of animal matter in our own Hudson's Bay territory, where, also, it is stated, the ground remains frozen throughout summer to within three feet of the surface, as in Siberia. CHAPTER LXIV. THE FRANCHISE. While I was a member of the City Council, the question of the proper qualification for electors of municipal councils and of the legislature, was much under discussion. I told my Reform opponents, who advocated an extremely low standard, that the lower they fixed the qualification for voters, the more bitterly they would be disappointed; that the poorer the electors the greater the corruption that must necessarily prevail. And so it has proved. In thinking over the subject since, I have been led to compare the body politic to a pyramid, the stones in every layer of which shall be more numerous than the aggregate of all the layers above it. And this comparison is by no means strained, as I believe it will be found, that each and every class is indeed numerically greater than all the classes higher in social rank--the idlers than the industrious--the workers than the employers--the children than the parents--the illiterate than the instructed--and so on. Thus it follows as a necessary consequence, that the adoption of the principle of manhood suffrage, now so much advocated, must necessarily place all political power in the hands of the worst offscourings of the community--law-breakers, vagrants, and outcasts of all kinds. This would be equivalent to inverting the pyramid, and expecting it to remain poised upon its apex--which is a mere impossibility.