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 heaped up in such quantities in certain parts of Siberia that he and his men climbed over ridges and mounds consisting entirely of the bones of Elephants, Rhinoceroses, etc. From these facts it would seem that they roamed over all these northern regions in troops as large and numerous as the Buffalo herds that wander over our Western prairies now. We are indebted to Russian naturalists, and especially to Rathke, for the most minute investigations of these remains, in which even the texture of the hair, the skin, and flesh has been subjected by him to microscopic examination as accurate as if made upon any living animal.