(II) Quadrumana: several animals between bats and monkeys of the order called lemurs (all in Indo-Malaya), all nocturnal and arboreal, some resembling a monkey, but with a membrane enabling them to skid (not quite to fly) from tree to tree, others that crawl slowly along the branches of the trees.

Of true monkeys very many in Indo-Malaya, of which the orang-outan of Malaya is the largest and most celebrated.

392. PLANTS. Asia as to its climate and animals has been divided into three principal regions, and we may extend nearly the same broad classification to its plants.

Ist. The Indo-Malay region includes India, South China, and all Asia south-east therefrom, including the Malay archipelago. This region is very hot and damp, abounding in rank vegetation called jungle.

2nd. The Western or Desert region includes Arabia, Turkey, Persia, Affghanistan and West India. This region abounds in deserts where there are few trees, and where the shrubs and herbs are often scrubby, harsh or prickly. Though a large proportion of this area is sandy or stony, veritable desert, there are numerous fertile valleys near rivers or by springs; but the climate is generally dry and the vegetation is nowhere jungly.

The great deserts of Turkestan and Mongolia resemble the western desert regions, but have a much cooler climate. They are very bare of trees, and contain a large number of saline plants, i.e. such as are seen on the sea-shores of Europe. 3rd. The Northern region extending from the Arctic Ocean to the Altai mountains and North China. Here we may find most of the trees and plants we see in England, or others very similar. For example, Siberia is covered with pine forests resembling those found in the northern half of Europe.

These European forms of plants also extend along the great mountain range from the Caucasus by the Elburz to the Central Himalaya, where, if we cannot find many English plants exactly, we may find many like them. Thus we there

see many kinds of oak, no one exactly like the English oak, many kinds of fir, several indeed very like the Scotch fir, but yet not exactly like. We see an elm, a plane, several maples, an ash, and two horse-chestnuts, but none exactly like the English trees so named.

It is therefore possible to give to persons who have not visited Asia some idea of the vegetation of Northern Asia and even of the Himalaya. But when we descend to the plains of India and the Indo-Malay region the case is different; the trees become very numerous, ten times as many sorts as in England; and they mostly belong to families unknown in England, so that it is impossible to describe most of the Indo-Malayan trees usefully for English readers. Among the most celebrated are—

a. The Palms, the date-palm, the Palmyra fan-palm, the cocoa-nut : the rattan is a twining palm.

b. The Bamboos, gigantic grasses attaining 60-100 feet high, the stems hollow and light, but immensely strong.

c. Large Figs, among which the banyan and india-rubber are well-known.

d. Teak, a light wood that works easily and yet possesses great strength, one of the finest timbers in the world for ship-building.

e. Cinnamon, cloves and mace, nutmegs. These (like teak) are trees bearing no true resemblance to any English tree; their names only can be given.

Turning to cultivated plants. Rice is the staff of life in ail the hot and moist regions of Asia, but it is not prolific except where it is irrigated either artificially or by the overflowing of rivers. Hence the actual area occupied by rice is not the major part of the country even in China or India; and in Persia it is restricted to a very narrow area.

Wheat is very extensively cultivated in all the dry parts of Asia that are not too cold for it, and even in North-west India so largely that it is exported thence to England.

Barley is cultivated in Siberia, in the valleys of the central plateau, in the plains of India, and thence to the Mediter

ranean.

Maize is cultivated in Japan, the interior of China, the Himalaya and Northern India.

Millets, i.e. various kinds of grasses with small grains, are cultivated throughout Asia, from Ceylon to Siberia, from China to Turkey. The different kinds, all called millet by the English, are all true grasses and feed more people in Asia, probably, than any other one plant.

Sago, the pith of the sago-palm, is largely consumed in Malaya, where also the bread-fruit tree (a kind of fig) has been introduced.

Peas, vetches, and French beans, of very numerous and varied kinds, form a large portion of the food of the Asiatic people; the kinds grown in India and Malaya differing from those grown in Western Asia, and altogether from those grown in Northern Asia.

Asia is supposed to be the original home of most of our cultivated fruits: the country from the north of Persia to Kashmir is supposed the home of the peach, apricot, vine, fig, pomegranate, damson, cherry, mulberry, walnut, apple, gooseberry, currant, strawberry, and many other fruits, but this is not certain. The orange, lime, lemon, &c., are supposed to have come from North-east India. The date forms a considerable portion of the food of the people in Southwest Asia, and the plaintain (also called the Banana) in South-east Asia. Tea is indigenous in South-west China and North-west India; coffee is cultivated in Arabia and India. Tobacco succeeds admirably in the driest part of Persia and in the moist climate of the Philippines; while the potato is cultivated from the tropical plains of India to the sub-arctic region of climate. Pumpkins, melons, and cucumbers of numerous kinds, yams, and sweet-potatoes, buck-wheat and love-lies-bleeding, are perhaps indigenous food-plants: papaws, pine-apples, custard-apples, and guavas have been introduced from America.

393. DIVISIONS. Asia is treated under the following divisions:

Sect. XX. SIBERIA (with Mantchuria).

394. EXTENT. Siberia is nearly twice as large as Europe, with less than half the population of England.

395. BOUNDARIES. Siberia is bounded by the Ural mountains on the West, the Arctic Ocean on the North, the Pacific on the East. The South boundary is taken to be the Altai, the southern boundary of Mantchuria being considered the watershed of the Saghalien, and the line from the Altai to the Ural being taken at or near 53° N.L.

All this territory belongs to Russia; and, besides this, Russia possesses other Asiatic territory in Mongolia and Turkestan. The boundary here laid down for the South of Siberia is by no means the southern boundary of the power of Russia in Asia.

396. ATTACHED ISLANDS. The larger part (the northern) of the island of Saghalien belongs to Russia.

The Kurile islands and the Aleutian islands are celebrated as a line of volcanoes which connect the Japanese volcanoes with those of North America.

397. GULFS. The sea of Japan is closed in by the peninsula Corea, the Japanese islands, Saghalien, and the coast of Mantchuria.

The sea of Okhotsk is similarly closed in by the island of Saghalien, the Kurile Islands, the peninsula of Kamschatka, and the mainland.

398. CLIMATE. The northern part of Siberia is within the Arctic Circle; here the ground at a few feet below the surface is always frozen, and the country is nearly uninhabited. The southern part of Siberia extends far into the temperate zone; Irkutsk, the largest town, is south of York, and it might be supposed that the climate was like that of England. But while England has a very insular climate, Siberia has an extremely continental one. For two or three months in summer it is oppressively hot at Irkutsk, but the winter is very long and intensely cold, Lake Baikal being frozen for months. In short, the climate in Siberia is everywhere severe. Mantchuria is still farther south, but here the great river Saghalien is frozen for four months, and the climate is rather inferior to that of Canada.

399. MOUNTAINS AND PLAINS. The Ural mountains, 3,000-5,000 feet high, bound Siberia on the west; the Altai mountains, 3,000-7,000 feet high, bound it on the south; the rest of Siberia is one vast plain little elevated above the sea. There are other mountain ranges in the extreme east, as in the Kamschatka peninsula, but their names in so remote and uninhabited a region are not worth committing to memory.

400. RIVERS. Three great rivers, 2,500 miles long each, rise in the Altai and flow north to the Arctic Ocean, viz., the Obi, Yenisei, and Lena. The thaw of spring affects their headwaters first, so that the floods from their upper part flow down over the ice in their lower, which being covered with water therefore never thaws during the whole of summer. Northern Siberia is thus a huge swamp above ice in summer, and far more impracticable to move about in than in winter. It seems impossible that much can be done to improve the country while all the rivers flow north in this way.

The Saghalien or Amoor, 2,700 miles long, is the great river of Mantchuria, hence also called Amoorland. This drains east to the Pacific, rendering Mantchuria much more capable of improvement than any part of Siberia.

401. COMMUNICATIONS. There are no railways, and