Still my imagination carried me away amongst the wonderful speculations of palaeontology. Though awake I fell into a dream. I thought I could see floating on the surface of the waters enormous Chelonia , pre-adamite tortoises, resembling floating islands. Over the dimly lighted strand there trod the huge mammals of the first ages of the world, the Leptotherium (slender beast), found in the caverns of Brazil; the Merycotherium (ruminating beast), found in the “drift” of ice-clad Siberia. Farther on, the pachydermatous Lophiodon (crested toothed), a gigantic tapir, hides behind the rocks to dispute its prey with the Anoplotherium (unarmed beast), a strange creature, which seemed a compound of horse, rhinoceros, camel, and hippopotamus, as if the creator, pressed for time in the first hours of the world, had assembled several animals into one. The colossal mastodon (nipple-toothed) twists and untwists his trunk, and brays and pounds with his huge tusks the fragments of rock that cover the shore; whilst the