[68] We may, however, observe that in the Iranian myth of Yima, which we have reported above, a square enclosure (_vara_) miraculously preserved from the deluge, holds the place of the Biblical Ark and of the vessel of Chaldean tradition. [69] The date of the first establishment of Indian Brahmanists in Java remains uncertain, but from the end of the second century B.C. the Greek Iambulos (Diod. Sicul. ii. 57) very exactly described as the way of writing in this island the syllabic system Kavi, borrowed from India. SUSPENDED ANIMATION. Some time since an article appeared in the _Times_, quoted from the _Brisbane Courier_ (an Australian paper of good credit), stating that one Signor Rotura had devised a plan by which animals might be congealed for weeks or months without being actually deprived of life, so that they might be shipped from Australia for English ports as dead meat, yet on their arrival here be restored to full life and activity. Many regarded this account as intended to be received seriously, though a few days later an article appeared, the opening words of which implied that only persons from north of the Tweed should have taken the article _au grand sérieux_. Of course it was a hoax; but it is worthy of notice that the editor of the _Brisbane Courier_ had really been misled, as he admitted a few weeks later, with a candour which did him credit.[70] This wonderful discovery, however, besides being worth publishing as a joke (though rather a mischievous one, as will presently be shown), did good service also by eliciting from a distinguished physician certain statements respecting the possibility of suspending animation, which otherwise might have remained for some time unpublished. I propose here to consider these statements, and the strange possibilities which some of them seem to suggest. In the first place, however, it may be worth while to recall the chief statements in the clever Australian story, as some of Dr. Richardson's statements refer specially to that narrative. I shall take the opportunity of indicating certain curious features of resemblance between the Australian story, which really had its origin in America (I am assured that it was published a year earlier in a New York paper), and an American hoax which acquired a wide celebrity some forty years ago, the so-called Lunar Hoax. As it is certain that the two stories came from different persons, the resemblance referred to seems to suggest that the special mental qualities (defects, _bien entendu_) which cause some to take delight in such inventions, are commonly associated with a characteristic style of writing. If Buffon was right, indeed, in saying, _Le style c'est de l'homme même_, we can readily understand that clever hoaxers should thus have a style peculiar to themselves.