numerical development) it appears to belong to a later age. In height it did not surpass the African elephant, but it considerably exceeded it in length--a specimen which could not have stood above twelve feet high indicating a length of about twenty-five feet: it had what the elephants want--tusks fixed in its lower jaw, which the males retained through life, but the females lost when young; its limbs were proportionally shorter, but more massive, and its abdomen more elongated and slim; its grinder teeth, too, some of which have been known to weigh from seventeen to twenty pounds, had their cusps elevated into great mammæ-like protuberances, to which the creature owes its name, and wholly differ in their proportions and outline from the grinders of the elephant. The much greater remoteness of the mastodontic period in Europe than in America is a circumstance worthy of notice, as it is one of many facts that seem to indicate a general transposition of at least the later geologic ages on the opposite sides of the Atlantic. EUROPEAN AND ASIATIC DELUGES --LOUIS FIGUIER The Tertiary formations, in many parts of Europe of more or less extent, are covered by an accumulation of heterogeneous deposits, filling up the valleys, and composed of very various materials, consisting mostly of fragments of the neighboring rocks. The erosions which we remark at the bottoms of the hills, and which have greatly enlarged already existing valleys; the mounds of gravel accumulated at one point, and which is formed of rolled materials, that is to say, of fragments of rocks worn smooth and round by continual friction during a long period, in which they have been transported from one point to another--all these signs indicate that these denudations of the soil, these displacements and transports of very heavy bodies to great distances, are due to the violent and sudden action of large currents of water. An immense wave has been thrown suddenly on the surface of the earth, making great ravages in its passage, furrowing the earth and driving before it débris of all sorts in its disorderly course. To what cause are we to attribute these sudden and apparently temporary invasions of the earth’s surface by rapid currents of water? In all probability to the upheaval of some vast extent of dry land, to the formation of some mountain or mountain range in the neighborhood of the sea, or even in the bed of the sea itself. The land, suddenly elevated by an upward movement of the terrestrial crust, or by the formation of ridges and furrows at the surface, has, by its reaction, violently agitated the waters, that is to say, the more mobile portion of the globe. By this new impulse the waters have been thrown with great violence over the earth, inundating the plains and valleys, and for the moment covering the soil with their furious waves, mingled with the earth, sand, and mud, of which the devastated districts have been denuded by their abrupt invasion.