one, more attractive and interesting than could be drawn from its present aspects. Then a warm and genial climate prevailed from the Gulf to the Arctic Sea; the Canadian highlands were higher, but the Rocky Mountains lower and less broad. Most of the continent exhibited an undulating surface; rounded hills and broad valleys covered with forests grander than any of the present day, or wide expanses of rich savannah over which roamed countless herds of animals, many of gigantic size, of which our present meagre fauna retains but a few dwarfed representatives. Noble rivers flowed through plains and valleys, and sea-like lakes broader and more numerous than those the continent now bears diversified the scenery. Through unnumbered ages the seasons ran their ceaseless course, the sun rose and set, moons waxed and waned over this fair land, but no human eye was there to mark its beauty or human intellect to control and use its exuberant fertility. Flowers opened their manycolored petals on meadow and hill-side, and filled the air with their fragrance, but only for the delectation of the wandering bee. Fruits ripened in the sun, but there was no hand there to pluck, nor any speaking tongue to taste. Birds sang in the trees, but for no ears but their own. The surface of lake or river was whitened by no sail, nor furrowed by any prow but the breast of the water fowl; and the far-reaching shores echoed no sound but the dash of the waves, and the lowing of the herds that slaked their thirst in the crystal waters.

Life and beauty were everywhere; and man, the great destroyer, had not yet come, but not all was peace and harmony in this Arcadia. The forces of nature are always at war, and redundant life compels abundant death. The innumerable species of animals and plants had each its hereditary enemy, and the struggle of life was so sharp and bitter that in the lapse of ages many genera and species were blotted out forever.

The herds of herbivores-which included nearly all the

genera now living on the earth's surface, with many strange forms long since extinct-formed the prey of carnivores commensurate to these in power and numbers. The coo of the dove and the whistle of the quail were answered by the scream of the eagle; and the lowing of herds and the bleating of flocks come to the ear of the imagination, mingled with the roar of the lion, the howl of the wolf, and the despairing cry of the victim. Yielding to the slow-acting but irresistible forces of nature, each in succession of these various animal forms has disappeared till all have passed away or been changed to their modern representatives, while the country they inhabited, by the upheaval of its mountains, the deepening of its valleys, the filling and draining of its great lakes, has become what it is.

These changes which I have reviewed in an hour seem like the swiftly consecutive pictures of the phantasmagoria or the shifting scenes of the drama, but the æons of time in which they were effected are simply infinite and incomprehensible to us. We have no reason to suppose that terra firma was less firm, or that the order of nature, in which no change is recorded within the historic period, was less constant then than now. At the present rate of change-throwing out man's influence-a period infinite to us would be required to revolutionize the climate, flora and fauna, and there is no evidence that changes were more rapid during the Tertiary ages.

Every day sees something taken from the rocky barrier of Niagara; and, geologically speaking, at no remote time our great lakes will have shared the fate of those that once existed at the far West. Already they have been reduced to less than half their former area-and the water level has been depressed three hundred feet or more. This process is

likely to go on until they are completely emptied. The cities that now stand upon their banks will, ere that time, have grown colossal in size, then gray with age, then have fallen into decadence and their sites be long forgotten,

but in the sediments that are now accumulating in these lakebasins will lie many a wreck and skeleton, tree-trunk and floated leaf. Near the city sites and old river mouths these sediments will be full of relics that will illustrate and explain the mingled comedy and tragedy of human life. These relics the geologist of the future will probably gather and study and moralize over as we do the records of the Tertiary ages. Doubtless he will be taught the same lesson we are, that human life is infinitely short, and human achievement utterly insignificant. Let us hope that this future man, purer in morals and clearer in intellect than we, may find as much to admire in the records of this first epoch of the reign of man, as we do in those of the reign of mammals.

THE CHINESE IN SAN FRANCISCO.

BY REV. A. P. PEABODY, D.D.

THE Chinese form from a seventh to a fifth part of the entire population of San Francisco, and are seen in considerable numbers in all parts of California. They mingle with no other race; they learn or profess to know enough and only enough of the English tongue to transact their necessary business with their employers; and in San Francisco they live almost wholly in their own crowded quarters, which constitute in all respects a city by itself.

In the street they are the cleanest and neatest of people. Every man and boy has his queue of hair, as long as himself, nicely wrapped in silk braid, and generally rolled round the head. Their principal garment is a dark blue, close-fitting frock. Their shoes are of silk or cloth, with felt soles.

Their houses are dirty beyond description. Scores and even hundreds of them are sometimes huddled together in the same building, with blankets for their only beds, and

almost their only furniture. In these houses their simple cooking is performed in the long halls into which their apartments open, over furnaces, with no legitimate outlet for the coal-smoke, which leaves its black and greasy deposit half an inch thick on the ceiling and walls. I went into several of their fashionable restaurants, and found them hardly less filthy than their lodgings, yet with a marvellous variety of complicated and indescribable delicacies, which a year's income of the establishment might have tempted me to touch, but certainly not to taste.

Their provision-shops contain little except pork, and that, seldom in a form in which it would be recognized by an unpractised eye. Every part of the swine, even the coagulated blood, is utilized; and the modes in which the various portions of the beast are chopped, minced, wrapped in intestines, dried almost to petrifaction, commingled with nauseous seasonings, pique the curiosity as much as they offend the nostrils of the American observer.

Their theatres offer an amazing spectacle. Their performances commence early in the forenoon, and last till midnight. Their plays are said to be historical, and they are often continued for several days. The scenery is simple, cheap, and gaudy, and is never changed. The costumes are splendid, with a vast amount of gilding and of costly materials, but inexpressibly grotesque, and many of the actors wear hideous masks. The orchestra consists of a tom-tom (which sounds as if a huge brass kettle were lustily beaten by iron drumsticks), and several of the shrillest of wind-instru'ments. The noise they make may be music to a Chinese ear, but it consists wholly of the harshest discords, and each performer seems to be playing on his own account, and to be intent on making all the noise he can. This noise is uninterrupted, and the actors who are all men (men playing the female parts in costume), shout their parts above the din in a falsetto recitative, monotonous till toward the close of a speech, but uniformly winding up with a long-drawn, many

quavered whine or howl. The performance is for the most part literally acting. A crowned king or queen is commonly on the stage, and almost always comes to grief. Parties of armed men meet on the stage, hold sham-fights, kick each other over, and force the sovereign into the melée. Then a rebel subject plants both his feet in the monarch's stomach, knocks him down, and himself falls backward in the very act. Thus the fight goes on, and gathers fury as its ranks are thinned, till at length the whole stage is covered with prostrate forms, which lie for a little while in the semblance of death, then pick themselves up, and scud off behind the scenes. The actors live in the theatre, though they might seem to have no living-room. I went into the principal theatre one morning, before the actors, who had been performing until a late hour, had arisen; and I found them lying. in one of the passage-ways in several tiers of holes, so nearly of the size of the human body that they could only have wormed themselves in feet first.

Gambling is one of their passions. There are numerous gambling-houses where the playing goes on through the whole day and night, with an orchestra like that of the theatre, enriched by a single female singer, whose song seems a loud, shrill, ear-piercing monotone, so horrible as almost to compel the belief that the Chinese ear must have as unique a structure as if it belonged to a different species from ours.

The Chinese exercise, with marvellous skill, all the mechanical arts and trades, and have as large a variety of shops as the Americans, with wonderfully rich assortments of goods, including works in wood-carving, ivory and filigree," which can nowhere be surpassed in delicacy and beauty.

Their temples or josh-houses, are small upper rooms, with hideously grinning idols, overlaid with tinsel, and covered with tawdry ornaments, on an elevated platform at the extremity of the apartment. Before these idols a dim lamp is always burning, and a table is spread for votive offerings. which are generally cups of tea or fruits. These apartments