of a foot in length, were
fitted to live, if not in a boreal, at least in a coldly-temperate
region. Indeed, there is proof positive of the then more milder
climate of these regions in the discovery of pine and birch-trunks
where no vegetation now flourishes; and further, in the fact that
fragments of pine-leaves, birch-twigs, and other northern plants, have
been detected between the grinders and within the stomachs of these
animals. We have thus evidence, that at the close of the tertiary,
and shortly after the commencement of the current epoch, the northern
hemisphere enjoyed a much milder climate; that it was the abode of
huge pachyderms now extinct; that a different distribution of sea
and land prevailed; and that on a new distribution or sea and land,
accompanied also by a different relative level, these animals died
away, leaving their remains imbedded in the clays, gravels, and other
alluvial deposits, where, under the antiseptic influence of an almost
eternal frost, many of them have been preserved as entire as at the
fatal moment they sank under the rigors of external conditions no
longer fitted for their existence. It has been attempted by some to
prove the adaptability of these animals to the present conditions
of the northern hemisphere; but so untenable in every phase is this
opinion, that it would be sheer waste of time and space to attempt its
refutation. That they may have migrated northward and southward with
the seasons is more than probable, though it has been stated that the
remains diminish in size the farther north they are found; but that
numerous herds of such huge animals should have existed in these
regions at all, and that for thousands of years, presupposes an
exuberant arboreal vegetation, and the necessary degree of climate for
its growth and development. It has been mentioned that the mastodon
and mammoth seem to have attained their meridian toward the close of
the tertiary epoch, and that a few may have lived even in the current
era; but it is more probable that the commencement of existing
conditions was the proximate cause of their extinction, and that not
a solitary specimen ever lived to be the contemporary of man.

* * * * *

[FROM FRASER'S MAGAZINE.]

ENGLISH HEXAMETERS.

BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR.

Askest thou if in my youth I have mounted, as others have mounted,
Galloping Hexameter, Pentameter cantering after,
English by dam and by sire;