Mexico, and also of the Incas, according to Sir Isaac Newton's mode of computation, accord with the date of this invasion of Japan.

The Lena. This noble river commences on the west side of Lake Baikal, and flows into the Arctic Sea in the latitude 73°; it is five thousand versts* in length. The islands at the mouths of the Lena have been famous for the mammoth + fishery from the earliest ages. The tusks are prized by the Chinese, Turks, and Persians as infinitely preferable to elephants' ivory. The Chinese history, five centuries before Christ, mentions these walrus haunts. The furs, the hawks and falcons of these northern latitudes are highly esteemed. The Turks, who possessed elephants, conquered Yakutsk in the sixth century, and named that country Northern Turquestan. In the thirteenth century the Emperor Kublai sent to the islands at the mouth of the Lena for his hawks and falcons. He kept ten thousand falconers. Some elephants have been found in the ice in these parts, and Mr. Adams describes ruins of ancient forts and mutilated remains of grotesque sculpture. The number of walruses slain annually is quite astonishing. § The mountain scenery at the mouth of the Lena, says Mr. Adams, " exalts the soul, and I was filled with emotions of joy at finding so much happiness amidst the Polar ice among these gay and innocent Tunguse fishermen."¶ In the year 1290, Kublai sent mathematicians to ascertain the

* A verst is three thousand five hundred English feet. Monsieur Lesseps crossed the Lena where it was two leagues in breadth.

This is the name of the walrus in these regions, which has been transferred to the elephant: hence innumerable errors in first-rate books of science and speculation.

It is said that they prefer it even to gold for the hafts of their scimitars and daggers. The ivory of the walrus does not become yellow, like that of the elephant.

|| Marsden's Marco Polo, p. 221.

§ Wars and Sports, chap. xvi.

¶ Ibid., p. 249.

latitude, as far as the 55th degree. The vicinity of Genghis's birth-place to the Lena, when we consider the immense scale of the hunting expeditions, will diminish the wonder that remains of elephants have been frequently found in these regions.

The Jenesai. The contents of the tombs at the city of Jenesai, at Krasnoyarsk and several other places in these parts, attest the residence of Mogul sovereigns. Thousands of cast idols in gold, medals of gold, large plates upon which the corpse is laid, diadems and chess-boards and men ali of gold, &c., &c. and remains of elephants, are found in these tombs. The greatest antiquity of these tombs (when discovered) was eleven hundred years, the latest four hundred.*

The Irtish. The fertile region at the sources of the Irtish is the favourite head-quarters of Turks, Moguls, and Calmucs (and Chinese) from early ages; the Greek emperors in the sixth century sent embassies to the Turks at this place. Kaidou, great grandson of Genghis and nephew of Kublai, governed central Siberia, and rebelled in the year 1268. Timur Kaan, Viceroy of Bangalla, Ava and Yunnan, invaded Siberia, and this rebellion was not terminated for thirty-three years, during which Kaidou was, in 1297, driven northward; many battles were fought by the river Irtish; and the Grand Khans were the whole time obliged to keep numerous armies in these countries. The first invasion was with three hundred thousand troops.

At Tara, Ommostroc, Tomsk, Batsamki, and Isetskoe, the governors permitted the people to ransack the neighbouring tombs, reserving a tenth share for themselves; the treasures were not exhausted after many years digging. Urns, figures in gold of the hippopotamus, tables of silver, and innumerable curiosities were found in the tombs. As Timur Kaan had all the elephant countries east of the Burrampooter under him (he became emperor in 1294, named Ching-tsong), we may safely conclude, many remains having been found in these

* Tooke's Russian Empire, vol. ii., p. 48.

quarters, that he was accompanied by numbers of those animals.

The Tobol. Between the sources of the Ischim and the Tobol, Oguz, the Cæsar of the East, resided. Many ruins and stone sculptures are existing in those deserts. This great conqueror subdued Cathay, and the countries called India extra Gangem, about eight centuries before Christ. Wars against China were frequent in those ages; and, in the note on the Amoor, we have seen that the Emperor of China was an ally of the Scythians against the Persians, and fought upon an elephant.-(Wars and Sports, ch. iii. and v.)

The Oby. The Tobol flows into the Oby at Tobolsk, and the Irtish joins the Oby in lat. 61°. The Oby reaches the Arctic Sea in lat. 66°.

A.D. 1242, Sheibani, grandson of Genghis Khan, founded Genghidin, on the west side of Tobolsk; and the capital was, after some years, established at Siber, eastward of Tobolsk. Siber was the capital of western Siberia, till that immense region was discovered by the Russians, long after the death of Columbus; and Siber was conquered, and the Mogul power abolished, in the year 1586. All India beyond the Ganges was conquered by Kublai, cousin of Sheibani, in 1272. Remains of elephants have been found in many places in this neighbourhood-some of them very little decayed.

Although some of the rivers above named may not be of a depth or description to admit of the dead body of an elephant being conveyed to the ocean, it must nevertheless be considered that many of the rivers enumerated are every year much swollen by the melting of the snow, and that heavy weights may float to their mouths upon the ice which breaks up in the spring *. We must take into consideration the number of elephants that may have been lost on the Japanese expedition, and the cer

The reader may judge of the commotions in the elements in these regions, by the fact of whales (one of them eighty-four feet long), described also by scientific writers as mammoths, being found above eight hundred miles inland from the Arctic Sea.-Strahlenberg, p. 404.

tainty that the largest and most valuable animals, from any peculiarity in the tusks, would naturally be sent as presents from the elephant provinces to the family residences, as the most acceptable; and that the same shaped tusks of these supposed antediluvian elephants have been found at Newnham, near Rugby, in England (the Tripontio of the Romans) *; and that remains of another elephant were found near Gloucester, mingled with bones and horns of oxen, sheep, and hogs; and a square stone with them, supposed to have belonged to a sacrificial altar.-(Hakewill's Apology, p. 228.) One was found near the sign of Sir John Oldcastle, in a gravel pit, near which a battle had been fought between the Britons and Romans, and with it the head of a British spear, made of flint. If we add to these facts that, in almost every place in Italy, Spain, and France, where remains of elephants have been dug up, it is known that the Carthaginians and Romans had fought battles in which elephants were slain, the reader who is in search of the truth will not fail to hesitate in his speculations regarding these tusks from Behring's Straits being of antediluvian origin.†

Horsley, Brit. Rom., p. 436.

+ The following is another proof of the necessity of caution on this interesting subject :–

"The jaw-bone of an enormous unknown animal has been discovered at Epperheim, in the canton of Arrey, on the left bank of the Rhine, by M. Schleiermacher. Several teeth had previously been found, resembling those which this jaw-bone contains; but as they were similar to those of the tapir, credit was given to the antediluvian existence of a gigantic species of that animal. This discovery will undeceive naturalists on that point. This animal belongs to a new genus. Supposing that its body was as small in proportion to the head as in the hippopotamus, its entire length must have been nineteen French feet. The largest quadruped hitherto known was a gigantic sloth, the megalonix, which was twelve feet long."-Literary Gazette, Nov. 22, 1828. We are not acquainted with the anatomy of the Om-Kergay, described by Burckhardt (Quarterly Review, Dec. 1823, p. 521) as quite harmless, and the size of a rhinoceros.

342

Practical Comparison of different TABLES of MORTALITY. In a Letter to Sir EDWARD HYDE EAST, Bart., M.P., F.R.S.

MY DEAR SIR,

(By a Correspondent.)

I had the honour of addressing to you, a few years since, an investigation of the value of human life, which was published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1826: and I had then occasion to employ a formula for expressing the annual decrements of life at all ages, in such a manner, as to serve sufficiently well for the intended purpose, of harmonizing the mean standard table, of which I had obtained the basis from a comparison of various documents. This formula would have been much too complicated for any thing like a direct introduction into the detail of calculation: but I have lately had the good fortune to discover some simpler expressions, which are capable of being extensively applied, with great convenience, to different cases occurring in the practice of Insurance, and which may also be readily adapted to a variety of tables of mortality, so as to afford a far nearer approach to the results belonging to each, than could be obtained from calculations derived from any other tables; and will frequently indeed be more likely to represent the true law of nature at each place of observation, than the actual records of a limited experience for each particular year throughout life.

2. The great computer Demoivre employed, on different occasions, two different hypotheses respecting the mean value of life: and each of these has its advantages in particular cases. The first was the arithmetical hypothesis, supposing, for instance, that out of 100 or of 86 persons born together, I shall die annually till the whole number be exhausted. The second was the geometrical hypothesis, as, supposing that 1 in 50, or in 100, of the living at any age shall die within a year: a law which seems somewhat to approach to that of nature in extreme old age.

3. I have lately added to these, from examining a report of the experience of the Equitable Assurance Office, a third hypothesis, which may be called the exponential; the proportional mortality ap