EUROPE (Abstract).

OCEANS. Atlantic, Arctic.

SEAS. Mediterranean, Adriatic, Levant, Marmora, Black; Azof; Caspian; North, White, Baltic.

GULFS. Bothnia, Finland, Lyons (the Lion), Genoa.
BAYS. Biscay, Naples, Riga.

STRAITS. Gibraltar, Dover, Dardanelles, Constantinople, Messina, Bonifacio, Sound.

CAPES. North, Matapan, Finisterre, Land's End. ISLANDS. Britain, Ireland, Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Candia, Iceland, Zealand, Gothland.

ARCHIPELAGOS. Levant, Danish, Hebrides.

MOUNTAIN RANGES. Alps, Pyrenees, Apennines, Carpathians, Balkan, Caucasus, Dovre, Ural.

VOLCANOS. Etna, Vesuvius, Hecla.

RIVERS. Volga, Don, Dnieper, Dniester, Vistula, Danube, Rhine.

LAKES. Ladoga, Onega, Wener, Wetter; Geneva, Lucerne, Como, Maggiore, Garda.

PENINSULAS. Italian, Spanish, Greek; Scandinavian, Denmark, Crimea.

ISTHMUS. Corinth.

RACES OF MEN. Keltic, Romanic, Teutonic, Sclavonic; Turks, Tartars, Magyars.

TOWNS (with their populations).

London, 3,250,000;

Paris, 1,800,000; Berlin, 850,000; Vienna, 825,000; Con

stantinople, 700,000; St. Petersburg, 546,000; Liverpool, 497,000; Glasgow, 477,000; Manchester, 476,000.

Sect. IV. ENGLAND.

65. The Dominions of the Queen of England are given in the annexed table :

In this section we shall deal with the Queen's dominions in Europe only.

§ ENGLAND (the Country).

66. EXTENT. England is about 350 miles long from Berwick to the Isle of Wight. It is very nearly triangular in shape; so that if we draw three lines, one from Berwick to Calais, another from Calais to Bodmin in Cornwall, and another from Bodmin to Berwick, the triangle thus formed will nearly fit the outline of England; and moreover, the parts left out of the triangle will roughly equal the part of the sea included within it.

Hence we can find pretty accurately the area of England, for the line from Bodmin to Calais is about 280 miles, and the line from Berwick to the Isle of Wight is nearly perpendicular to it. Hence, as the area of any triangle is half its base multiplied by its height, the area of England in square miles will be half 280 multiplied by 350 = 49,000, which we can see by the above table is pretty near the truth.

67. BOUNDARIES. On the East-the North Sea, called also the German Ocean: on the South-the English Channel on the West-the Atlantic, Bristol Channel, Wales, the Irish Sea on the North-Scotland.

The boundary-line between England and Wales is an artificial one, but follows in the main the division between the plains (as Hereford) and the hills (as Brecknock). The boundary between England and Scotland follows chiefly the Cheviot hills and the Tweed.

68. ATTACHED ISLANDS. The Isle of Wight, which is included in the county of Southampton, and is less than a mile from the coast. All the other so-called islands of any size are barely separated by water from England: such

are :

(1) Holy Island, off the coast of Northumberland, a peninsula at low tide.

(2) Sheppey and Thanet, on the north coast of Kent.

(3) Hayling, near Chichester.

(4) Portland, which is an island at high water only.

(5) St. Michael's Mount in Cornwall, near Penzance, similarly is an island at high water, a peninsula at low water. (6) Purbeck, in Dorset, is a peninsula.

Lastly, Ely in Cambridge is still called the Isle of Ely: being a knoll formerly surrounded by swamps before the Fens were drained.

69. CAPES AND HEADLANDS.

(1) The Land's End and the Lizard Point in Cornwall. (2) Start Point in Devon, and Portland Bill in Dorset. (3) Selsea Bill and Beachy Head in Sussex.

(4) The North Foreland and South Foreland in Kent. (5) Flamborough Head in Yorkshire.

70. GULFS AND BAYS.

(1) The Bristol Channel.

(2) The Wash.

(3) Solway Firth.

(4) Morecambe Bay.

71. ESTUARIES. The Severn, Thames, Humber, Mersey, and Dee. Also that of the Test and Itchen, better known as Southampton Water.

72. CLIMATE. We have already taken our English climate as the standard of the cool-temperate. Wheat flourishes in the whole of England. We call June, July, August, September, summer; October and the first half of November, autumn; from mid-November to mid-April, winter: and the latter half of April with May, spring.

We notice as peculiarities of the English climate:

First, that the climate is moist, with variable winds and much cloud. There is no settled rainy season; but rain may fall any week in the year, and sometimes does fall in nearly every week.

Second, as a consequence of the first, neither the cold nor the heat can often last many weeks in succession. The English climate is called therefore an "insular climate; that is, the range of temperature is much less than in countries farther from the sea. In these (in the same

latitude) the summer is much hotter, the winter much colder, than that of England.

Third, the mean temperature of England is higher, that is to say, the climate on the whole is warmer than that of other countries in the same latitude, owing to the Gulf Stream, as explained above.

Fourth, the west side of England is moister than the east side, which has therefore a less insular climate. Thus, Norwich is much colder than Shrewsbury in winter, but is hotter in summer. There is more skating at Norwich than at Shrewsbury, but much less than at Amsterdam. Wheat prefers a dry climate, so that there is much less wheat grown in the western half of England than in the eastern.

Fifth, England is placed in the centre of the temperate zone, so that a few miles more north makes a sensible difference in the warmth. Thus the south coast of England is warmer than the valley of the Thames; the harvest is a fortnight earlier in Hampshire than in Yorkshire; the fig and the grape ripen tolerably in the open air in the South of England, but will not in the North. The myrtle and arbutus will endure the winter of the Isle of Wight or Devonshire, but not even that of the centre of England.

73. MOUNTAINS AND RIVER-BASINS.

We refer to

the annexed sketch-map which is drawn to show the principal mountains and river-basins disentangled from the towns and counties which obscure those natural features in a general map.

In this sketch we have first drawn a main line of watershed from the Cheviots to the North Foreland in Kent. This is represented by a line of heavy dots; all the water on its eastern side falls into the German Ocean; all the water on its western side into the English Channel, Atlantic, and Irish sea. Next we have by lines of light dots separated out four principal river-basins, viz. Humber, Wash, Thames, Severn. Lastly, we have by shading represented the principal masses of high ground.

* Starting from the Cheviots we see the principal mountain range of England extending along the boundary between