which appal men by their magnitude are "to it but as the roughnesses on the peel of an orange to the whole fruit. No wonder, then, that these minute excrescences, which we call mighty mountains, are soon washed down. To us they seem so immense as to be absolutely immovable and unchangeable. In comparison with the whole mass of the world they are nothing, and in a bird's-eye view of the entire earth they would be scarcely perceptible. Here, then, we have a scale upon which to base our views of the universe, and again we are reminded of its inconceivable proportions.
And from those cold mountain solitudes, from the lonely desert tracts, the thoughts are brought back to scenes of busy life—the crowded haunts of men, the teeming swarms of animal life, and the varied types of the vegetable kingdom ; and I think of the forests in Manchuria, with all their numerous life crowded into the brief summer season—the huge oak trees, the tall elms ; the birches, firs, and pines ; and all the wealth of flowery beauty, the lilies, irises, and columbines, in sheets of colour : of the river-banks and waters of the lakes, teeming with animal life of every kind—the thousands of duck and geese and snipe, and every form of waterfowl in countless numbers ; the swarms of insect life ; the great droves of ponies on the steppes ; and the herds of graceful antelopes :—I think of these, and of all the varied races of mankind with whom I have been brought in contact—the cold, 'unattractive, but intelligent and thrifty Chinamen ; the dreamy, listless nomads of Mongolia ; the lethargic men of Turkestan ; the rough, hardy races of the Himalayas ; the impressionable Chitralis ; the trusty Sikhs ; and the jovial little Gurkhas :—and there comes the remembrance of the latest scientific truth, that all this varied life, from the lowliest plant, from the minutest insect, to the sharp-witted Chinamen, and to the highest civilized races, are all but branches from the same original forms of life. While the mountains have
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