larger scale. In the disposition of the islands some curious coincidences have been noticed by German geographers, but these resemblances are in many instances more fanciful than real, and have no discoverable bearing either on the problems of geology or geography. Many of the larger islands-as Iceland, Spitzbergen, Novaia Zemlia, Madagascar, and the like—are solitary and independent; others again-as Tierra del Fuego, Sicily, Ceylon, Tasmania, &c.—are curiously connected with the extremity of some peninsula and continent, to which they form, as it were, mere outliers; while, in a majority of cases, the islands proper are found in clusters or Archipelagos (a term originally applied to Isles of Greece), such as the West India Islands, the Isles of Greece, the East India Islands, the Japan Isles, the Sandwich Islands, and many other groups that must at once present themselves on the most cursory inspection of the Map of the World. This disposition is no doubt in intimate connection with geological centres of uprise or depression-uprise into new continental areas, or depression into new seas; but the consideration of such oscillations in the earth's crust belongs more appropriately to Geology than to Physical Geography. 40. In describing the features and peculiarities of the Land, geographers make use of the following designations, which, though familiar in everyday language, may here, for the sake of method, be briefly recapitulated. Thus, a continent, as already indicated, is any extensive region uninterrupted or unbroken by seas; an island, any smaller portion surrounded by water; a peninsula (Lat. pene, almost; insula, island), a portion nearly surrounded by water; an isthmus (Gr.), the narrow neck that connects two adjacent masses of land, or a peninsula with the mainland; and a cape, promontory, headland, or ness, a point of land jutting out into the water. Besides these terms, which refer to the contour or disposition of the land as connected with water, there are others which relate to surface configuration or vertical relief. Thus, extensive flats are known as plains, steppes, prairies, pampas, and the like; smaller flats as valleys, dales, straths, carses, &c. ; lands elevated more or less abruptly above the general surface are spoken of as rising into hills, or still higher into mountains; hills and mountains may stand less or more apart from each other and be isolated, may occur in groups as if connected with a common centre, or they may stretch away in determinate courses known as chains and ranges; while level elevated tracts are spoken of as table-lands and plateaux. 41. Though encircling the globe on every side, and in all its parts most intimately connected with one great ocean, the Water is still divisible into certain areas that are more or less defined by the intervention of the land. Thus, on the west of the Old World, and between it and the New World, extends one main division known as the Atlantic (so called by the ancients from its washing the western base of Mount Atlas in Africa); on the west of the New World, and between it and the Old, expands another natural division known as the Pacific (from its comparative freedom from storms); while between Australia and its contiguous islands on the east and Africa on the west, lies the Indian Ocean. It is usual, however, to speak of five great oceans-viz., the Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, Arctic, and Antarctic-the two latter being respectively within the arctic and antarctic circles. In geographical descriptions it is also useful to employ the terms "North and South Atlantic," and "North and South Pacific," and to speak of the expanse that stretches away in unbroken vastness between the Indian Ocean and the south pole as the "Great Southern Ocean." The areas of these respective expanses are usually estimated as follows: Being ignorant of the amount of land that lies within the arctic and antarctic circles, and also of the exact extent of many islands both in the northern and southern oceans, the above must be taken as approximations merely; and, further, as amounts that do not embrace the areas of minor and inland seas-such as the North, Baltic, Mediterranean, Red, Black, Caspian, &c.—which occupy considerable spaces on the surface of the globe, and which exercise, moreover, a much greater influence on its climate, produce, population and industry, than their mere surface spaces would imply. 42. In treating of the waters of the globe, though there is, strictly speaking, only one great ocean, the term ocean is applied to the large uninterrupted expanses above defined; smaller areas are known as seas; gradual bendings of the water into the land as bays; deeper indentations as gulfs; minor and sudden indentations as creeks, inlets, arms, &c.; the narrow belts or openings connecting two adjacent seas as straits, or channels; and where the sea stretches inland to receive the waters of a river, such an expanse is known as a frith or estuary. Besides these general terms, there are others of a more local and restricted character, as the fiords or rocky inlets of Norway-the lochs, or lake-like sea-arms of Scotland-the lagoons, or shallow intercepted sheets that occur along the shores of the Adriatic and other seas; but these will be best described under the respective areas to which they belong. Again, referring to the depth of the ocean, whose bed seems to be as irregular and varied as the surface of the dry land, geographers speak of deeps and pits; of shoals and banks; of sounds that may be readily reached by the sounding-line; of roads and roadsteads for anchorage; of harbours or landlocked inlets for shelter; and similar terms, whose meanings are so obvious as to require no special definition. [Simple and obvious as most of these geographical terms may appear, each has still its own peculiar shade of meaning, and with this the student would do well to render himself early familiar. Where not explained in the text, definitions will be found in the Glossary, which should be regularly consulted as the term or technicality occurs. There is nothing so essential in geographical description as clearness and precision, and this can only be obtained by employing for the object described the term by which it is known, and this in such a way that it cannot be confounded with any other object, or mistaken for something else. Precise writing need not be dry reading; on the contrary, it is loose description that soonest fatigues, and leaves, in the long-run, the least satisfactory impression.] 43. Besides the great oceans and inland seas above alluded to, and which all consist of salt water, there are other considerable volumes that belong more especially to the land, and which consist mainly of fresh water, comparatively few being brackish or saline. These are the springs issuing from the earth's crust, and more or less impregnated with the mineral substances through which they have percolated; the streams, or runnels of water formed by the union of several springs; the rivers, formed by the union of streams, and often traversing whole continents with gradually increasing volumes; and the lakes, which occupy depressions in the land, and most frequently lie along the courses of rivers, though occasionally occurring isolated and apparently fed by springs, or, if receiving the waters of a river, have no river of discharge, but give off their surplus water by evaporation. The amount of surface occupied by these inland waters it is impossible to estimate with anything like accuracy; and this difficulty is greatly increased by the fact that, in countries subject to periodical rains, many tracts which become lakes and rivers during the wet season, are mere swamps and dry shingly channels when the period of drought returns. The main volumes of fresh water, as will be seen when we come to treat of the "River-systems," are the North American lakes, the lakes of Northern Europe and Central Asia, and the greater and more permanent rivers-as the St Lawrence, Mackenzie, and Mississippi in North America; the Amazon, Orinocco, and La Plata in South America; the Nile and Niger in Africa; the Ganges, Indus, Yang-tse-kiang, Lena, Yenesei, and Obi in Asia; and the Volga and Danube in Europe. Springs, streams, rivers, lakes, and seas thus constitute what may be termed the geographical phases of water, or, in other words, its position and disposition on the earth's surface. Water, however, is circling everywhere, and is everywhere present, either in its aëriform, liquid, or solid condition. Floating in the air that surrounds us, circulating in the tissues of plants and animals, embodied in the substance of the hardest rocks, coursing over the earth's surface, or percolating deep in the solid crust, it is the great vital fluid of nature, by which the whole is permeated, combined, dissolved, reconstructed, and vivified in endless revolution and progress. Their Mutual Actions and Reactions. 44. Such is the relative distribution, and such the general features, of the land and water that form the surface of the terraqueous globe. Whatever may have been their distribution in former ages as revealed by Geology, one thing is obvious, that in the present era they are, within certain limits of change, mutually adapted and harmoniously adjusted. The land absorbs and radiates the sun's heat more readily than the water; and thus, while parched and thirsty in summer, it is refreshed and vivified by the moisture evaporated from the more extensive ocean; while in winter its tendency to grow colder is modified by the heat given off by the ocean, whose slower radiation renders it, as it were, a great storehouse of latent heat for the exigencies of the land. Besides this interchange of heat and moisture, there is also the interchange of aërial currents and winds, caused by the unequal capacity of the two great surfaces for heat; and thus, as will be more fully explained hereafter, the whole machinery of climate-hot winds, cold winds, vapours, rains, and the like-is set agoing by the primary differences existing between land and water. As at present distributed, a certain amount of moisture is evaporated from the ocean and carried to the land, a certain amount of heat is interchanged-certain winds blow at certain seasons, certain tides rise and fall, and certain currents flow in the performance of certain functions; but all this would be changed by the slightest alteration either in the relative areas, in the relative configurations, or in the relative positions of land and water. In their present areas, configurations, and dispositions, the two elements are harmoniously adapted for the production of certain results, geological, climatological, and vital; and the student must readily perceive how the force of tides and waves and currents would be altered, the climate of regions changed, and their plants and animals affected by the slightest disturbance in the existing terraqueous arrangements. Let North and South America be severed by the disappearance of Panama-let the bed of the Atlantic be upraised so as to deflect the Gulf Stream on the coasts of Greenland instead of those of Europe-let the central plain of Europe be submerged so as to be occupied by another Mediterranean,—let these, or any similar set of changes be effected on the present arrangement of the continents and oceans, and a whole host of new secondary influences would be set in motion, altering the climates and modifying the kind and character of the plants and animals that people these regions. So intimately, in fact, does the conditions of the one element depend upon those of the other, and plants and animals upon both, that not a league of land could be converted into sea, or a league of sea-bed upheaved into dry land —the land raised a foot higher or the sea become a foot deeperwithout a corresponding change being effected on the whole economy, physical and vital, of our planet. From Nature's chain whatever link you strike, NOTE, RECAPITULATORY AND EXPLANATORY. The facts detailed in the preceding chapter are so simple and obvious, that they require little recapitulation or further explanation. The surface of the globe, or that which comes in contact with the atmosphere, is partly occupied by land and partly by water -the former constituting more than a fourth, and the latter about three-fourths of the entire area. On a cursory inspection of the map of the world, the land will be seen to resolve itself into two main masses-the Eastern hemisphere or Old World, and the Western hemisphere or New World; and these by geographers are usually further subdivided into the so-called “quarters" or continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa in the former; North and South America in the latter; together with a south or insular division, embracing Australia, &c., under the name of Oceania. Of these continents the greater portion lies in the northern hemisphere, the broader masses spreading out towards the north, and gradually narrowing towards the south in the cape-like projections of South America, Africa, Hindostan, and the Malayan Peninsula. The |