morning, "I wish you a happy new year!" and the parents reply, "A happy new year, my dear children!" The first of January is, then, a day of kind wishes; of happy hopes; of bright anticipations: it is a day in which we feel at peace with all the world, and, if we have done our duty well during the departed year, we feel peaceful within.

Methinks I hear my young readers say, Would that all our days might be thus cheerful and agreeable!" Alas! this may not be. It is not our lot to be thus cheerful and happy all the days of our lives. A part of our time must be devoted to study, to labor, to duty. We cannot always be enjoying holidays. And, indeed, it is not best we should. As people do not wish always to be eating cake and sugar-plums, so they do not always desire to be sporting and playing. As the cake and sugar-plums would, by and by, become sickening to the palate, so the play would at last grow tedious. As we should soon desire some good solid meat, so we should also desire some useful and instructive occupation.

But as it is now new year's day, let us make the best of it. I wish you a happy new year, my black-eyed or blue-eyed reader! Nay, I wish you many a happy new year! and, what is more, I promise to do all in my power to make you happy, not only for this ensuing year, but for many seasons to come. And how do you think I propose to do it? That is what I propose to tell you!

In the first place, I am going to tell you, month by month, a lot of stories both useful and amusing. I wish to have a part of your time to myself, and, like my young friend Tom Stedfast, whose portrait I give you at the head of this article, I wish you not only to read my Magazine, but, if you have any

little friends who cannot afford to buy it, I wish you to lend it to them, so that they may peruse it.

Tom is a rare fellow! No sooner does he get the Magazine than he sits down by the fire, just as you see him in the picture, and reads it from one end to the other. If there is anything he don't understand, he goes to his father and he explains it. If there are any pretty verses, he learns them by heart; if there is any good advice, he lays it up in his memory; if there is any useful information, he is sure to remember it. Tom resembles a squirrel in the autumn, who is always laying up nuts for the winter season; for the creature knows that he will have need of them, then. So it is with Tom; when he meets with any valuable knowledge—it is like nuts to him—and he lays it up, for he is sure that he will have use for it at some future day. And there is another point in which Tom resembles the squirrel; the latter is as lively and cheerful in gathering his stores for future use, as he is in the spring time, when he has only to frisk and frolic amid the branches of the trees-and Tom is just as cheerful and pleasant about his books and his studies, as he is when playing blind-man's-buff.

Now I should like to have my young readers as much like Tom Stedfast as possible; as studious, as fond of knowledge, and yet as lively and as good humored. And there is another thing in which I should wish all my young friends to resemble Tom; he thinks everything of me! No sooner does he see me stumping and stilting along, than he runs up to me, calling out, "How do you do, Mr. Merry? I'm glad to see you; I hope you are well! How's your wooden leg?"

Beside all this, Tom thinks my Museum is first-rate-and I assure you it is a great comfort to my old heart, when

1 find anybody pleased with my little Magazine. I do not pretend to write such big books as some people; nor *do I talk so learnedly as those who go to college and learn the black arts. But what I do know, I love to communicate; and I am never so happy as when I feel that I am gratifying and improving young people. This may seem a simple business, to some people, for an old man; but if it gives me pleasure, surely no one has a right to grumble about it.

There is another thing in Tom Stedfast which I like. If he meets with anything in my Magazine which he does not think right, he sits down and writes me a letter about it. He does

not exactly scold me, but he gives me a piece of his mind, and that leads to explanations and a good understanding. So we are the best friends in the world. And now what I intend to do is, to make my little readers as much like Tom Stedfast as possible. In this way I hope I may benefit them not only for the passing year, but for years to come. I wish not only to assist my friends in finding the right path, but I wish to accustom their feet to it, so that they may adopt good habits and continue to pursue it. With these intentions I enter upon the new year, and I hope that the friendship already begun between me and my readers, will increase as we proceed in our journey together.

THERE are few things more curious, strange, and wonderful than the facts revealed by geology. This science is occupied with the structure of the surface of the earth; it tells us of the rocks, gravel, clay, and soil of which it is composed, and how they are arranged.

In investigating these materials, the geologists have discovered the bones of strange animals, imbedded either in the rocks or the soil, and the remains of vegetables such as do not now exist. These are called fossil remains; the word fossil meaning dug up. This subject has occupied the attention of many very learned men, and they have at last come to the most astonishing results. A gigantic skeleton has been found in the earth near Buenos Ayres, in South America; it is nearly as large as the elephant, its body being nine feet long and seven feet high. Its feet were enormous, being a yard in length, and more than twelve inches wide. They were terminated by gigantic claws; while its

huge tail, which probably served as a means of defence, was larger than that of any other beast, living or extinct.

This animal has been called the Megatherium: mega, great, therion, wild beast. It was of the sloth species, and seems to have had a very thick skin, like that of the armadillo, set on in plates resembling a coat of armor. There are no such animals in existence now; they belong to a former state of this earth,-to a time before the creation of man.

Discoveries have been made of the remains of many other fossil animals belonging to the ancient earth. One of them is called the Ichthyosaurus, or fish lizard. It had the teeth of a crocodile, the head of a lizard, and the fins or paddles of a whale. These fins, or paddles were very curious, and consisted of above a hundred small bones, closely united together. This animal used to live principally at the bottoms of rivers, and devour amazing quantities of fish,

But we have not yet mentioned the greatest wonder of fossil animals; this is the Iguanodon, whose bones have been found in England. It was a sort of lizard, and its thigh bones were eight inches in diameter. This creature must have been from seventy to a hundred feet long, and one of its thighs must have been as large as the body of an ox. I have given a portrait of this monster, drawn by Mr. Billings, an excellent young artist, whom you will find at No. 10, Court st., Boston. I cannot say that the picture is a very exact likeness; for as the fellow has been dead some thousands of years, we can only be expected to give a family resemblance. We have good reason to believe, however, that it is a tolerably faithful representation, for it is partly copied from a design by the celebrated John Martin, in London, and

to be found in a famous book on the wonders of geology, by Mr. Mantel.

There was another curious animal, called the Pterodactyle, with gigantic wings. The skull of this animal must have been very large in proportion to the size of the skeleton, the jaws themselves being almost as large as its body.

Skeleton of the Pterodactyle.

They were furnished with sharp, hooked teeth. The orbits of the eyes were very large; hence it is probable

that it was a nocturnal animal, like the bat, which, at first sight, it very much resembles in the wings, and other particulars.

The word pterodactyle signifies wingfingered; and, if you observe, you will find that it had a hand of three fingers at the bend of each of its wings, by which, probably, it hung to the branches of trees. Its food seems to have been large dragon-flies, beetles and other insects, the remains of some of which have been found close to the skeleton of the animal. The largest of the pterodactyles were of the size of a raven. One of them is pictured in the cut with the Iguanodon.

Another very curious animal which has been discovered is the Dinotherium, being of the enormous length of eighteen feet. It was an herbiferous animal, and inhabited fresh water lakes and rivers, feeding on weeds, aquatic roots, and vegetables. Its lower jaws measured four feet in length, and are terminated by two large tusks, curving downwards, like those of the upper jaw of the walrus; by which it appears to have hooked itself to the banks of rivers as it slept in the water. It resembled the tapirs of South America. There appear to have been several kinds of the dinotherium, some not larger than a dog. One of these small ones is represented in the picture with the Iguanodon.

The bones of the creatures we have been describing, were all found in England, France, and Germany, except those of the megatherium, which was found in South America. In the United States, the bones of an animal twice as big as an elephant, called the Mastodon, or Mammoth, have been dug up in various places, and a nearly perfect skeleton is to be seen at Peale's Museum, in Philadelphia.

Now it must be remembered that the

bones we have been speaking of, are found deeply imbedded in the earth, and that no animals of the kind now exist in any part of the world. Beside those we have mentioned, there were many others, as tortoises, elephants, tigers, bears, and rhinoceroses, but of different kinds from those which now exist.

It appears that there were elephants of many sizes, and some of them had woolly hair. The skeleton of one of the larger kinds, was found in Siberia, some years since, partly imbedded in ice, as I have told you in a former number.

The subject of which we are treating increases in interest as we pursue it. Not only does it appear, that, long before man was created, and before the present order of things existed on the earth, strange animals, now unknown, inhabited it, but that they were exceedingly numerous. In certain caves in England, immense quantities of the bones of hyenas, bears, and foxes are found; and the same is the fact in relation to certain caves in Germany.

Along the northern shores of Asia, the traces of elephants and rhinoceroses are so abundant as to show that these regions, now so cold and desolate, were once inhabited by thousands of quadrupeds of the largest kinds. In certain parts of Europe, the hills and valleys appear to be almost composed of the bones of extinct animals; and in all parts of the world, ridges, hills and mountains, are made up of the shells of marine animals, of which no living specimen now dwells on the earth!

Nor is this the only marvel that is revealed by the discoveries of modern geology. Whole tribes of birds and insects, whole races of trees and plants, have existed, and nothing is left of their story save the traces to be found in the soil, or the images depicted in the layers