,
RAYMOND C.
CHARLESTOWN, S.C., June 9th, 1897.

DEAR RAYMOND:

You will find something about the Junior Republic in the next number of
the Magazine.

About the ex-Empress Carlotta of Mexico, we have no fresh news for you.
EDITOR

DEAR EDITOR:

Our teacher in the Germantown Academy reads to us the paper which
you call THE GREAT ROUND WORLD. THE GREAT ROUND WORLD and _Harper's
Round Table_ I consider the best papers for boys of which I have
any knowledge. I would like to know whether the whale could walk
on land, as other animals do. My father told me that the whale was
in its former condition a land animal, which had changed its home
to the water.

Yours respectfully,
FRANZ W.
GERMANTOWN, PA., June 14th, 1897.

DEAR FRANZ:

Whales are in many respects the most interesting and wonderful of
creatures. It would seem that at one time they may have been land
creatures, and able to walk on land as other animals do. That is,
however, so very remote that we have no record of it. Scientific men
base their arguments in favor of this theory on the facts that whales
are not true fish, but are indeed land mammals adapted to living in the
water.

Their fore-limbs, though reduced to mere paddles, have all the bones,
joints, and even most of the muscles, nerves, and arteries of the human
arm and hand. The rudiments of hind-legs are found buried deep in the
interior of the animal, and in the young whales bristles about the chin
and upper lip give evidence that the whales have once been covered with
hair like other mammals.

The blubber is also arranged by nature as a means for keeping their
bodies warm. True fishes are cold-blooded animals, and not sensible to
differences of temperature.

All these different facts make people think that at some very remote
period whales were land animals.

EDITOR.

THE GREAT ROUND WORLD AND THE PEOPLE WHO LIVED ON IT.

CHAPTER I.

There was once a man who lived with his family on a large farm in a fine
valley sheltered by high mountains. The farm had need to be large, for
the family was numerous. There were the old man's children and
grandchildren, and these again had sons and daughters, and they all
l