the immense and almost insuperable obstacles which Nature has placed so thickly in Asia may be added, and also the immense variety of natural productions which climates so different as those of the different parts of the continent exhibit. Extending from the equator to the north frigid zone, Asia affords a home for the most diversified kinds of plants and animals, and shows, too, hardly less variety in its eastern and western extremes than in its northern and southern. The characteristics of the Chinese flora and fauna are very widely different from those of Hither Asia. In the east we have the sago-tree and the tiger; in the west, the date-palm and the lion. The north gives us moss, the coniferæ, and the reindeer, in contrast with the bread-fruit tree, the sugar-cane, the broad-leaved banana, the elephant, rhinoceros, tapir, and monkey of the south.

The inexhaustibleness of the Asiatic continent is not more visible in all this wealth of production than in the abundance as well as the variety of human life. Though Asia has been the mother of the world, and has sent out so many and so eminent races, it has not been to the depletion of the parent country. In race, figure, colour, manner of life, nationality, religion, political and social bonds of union, forms of government, culture, language, it is so richly diversified, that no continent, viewed historically, can be compared to it. Asia seems to have been created to send forth its fruitful scions of life to all the other great divisions of the earth.

Europe, the Occident. The smallest of the three continents of the Old World, its superficial contents are placed in the most manifold relations to its coast-line. Only on the east side has it a land frontier; and there it has its widest extent from north to south.

Like Asia, it is

bordered on three sides by the ocean. Asia seems like a mighty trunk, at whose western extremity the broken and serrated occident is found, advancing in breadth from north to south, but articulating into arms of various size from east to west, till it loses itself in the peninsulas of the Atlantic coast. The nearer to Asia, the broader is Europe, and the more akin to the Asiatic character; the farther from it, the more minute become its subdivisions, and the more varied its character.

Taken in a general way, the proportion of the truly continental part of Europe to the maritime districts is much less than is the case in Asia. Its contrast with Africa is, of course, yet more striking.

Europe begins at the east, at the foot of the Ural and Caucasus, and at the steppes of west Asia. It does not take, as Asia and Africa do, a trapezoidal or oval form, but in its linear dimensions there is a great difference between its length and breadth. By the diminution of its width as we go westward, and by the increase of its articulations, the number of its internal relations increases toward the Atlantic. A great falling off in the Oriental character, which has largely encroached upon Russia, and a constant increase of an independent spirit, is the sure result of natural conditions, and is experienced in all life, and in things material as well as intellectual and moral. The configuration here wins a palpable victory over mere quantity, and the exceedingly varied coast gives to all European institutions their distinctive character.

Beginning with a breadth of about 1400 miles at the east, the continent gradually diminishes in width to 1000, 500, and even to 250 miles. Its first narrowing is visible between the Gulf of Riga and the Bay of Odessa; the next is between the Baltic and the Gulf of Trieste; the

next, between the Zuider-Zee and the Gulf of Genoa; the next, between the English Channel at Calais and the Gulf of Lions; and the last, between Bayonne and Perpignan.

With almost three times as great a length as breadth, Europe extends for a distance of above 3000 miles from the southern part of the Ural chain and from the Caucasus to the extremities of the bold coast of Spain and Portugal, Capes Finistère and St Vincent. In this way the continent assumes very nearly the form of a rightangled triangle, the right angle lying at the Caspian, the base extending westward to Cape Finistère, the perpendicular running northward along the Ural Mountains to Waigats Strait, and the hypothenuse connecting the two extremities. The area embraced within this triangle would be not far from 2,200,000 square miles. Such a triangle, however, is not exact,—it is but an approximation to mathematical precision; but it is clearly enough marked to be traced upon our map, or, as a spherical triangle, upon our globes. All geographical forms have only a more or less remote approach to mathematical exactness, but enough to aid us very much in representing them and showing their relations.

Almost all the greater and really important extremities of the continent lie outside of the triangle above indicated; and this method of treatment only serves to call attention to the great central mass, which would otherwise be in danger of being overlooked, in view of the immense value and influence of the countries on the coast and beyond the triangular line of demarcation. It needs but a glance to see how the projecting shores have marred all the theoretical precision of such a line.

The coast-line shows itself directly subject to almost

boundless diversity. Toward the west the independence of each peninsula increases, the more evidently and prominently according to its distance from Asia. Not articulated on two sides alone, like Asia, the east and south, but on three of its sides exposed to the ocean, the broken coast-line is universal in Europe—even toward the colder north, where its peninsulas and adjacent islands almost enclose two seas, the North and the Baltic. The advantage which this gives to Europe over Asia in respect to the development of its more northern regions, is very great and evident.

We will enumerate the leading peninsulas of Europe: Kola, on the White Sea, between Lake Enara, the Varanger Fiord, and the Bay of Kandalaska, pointing westward.

Scandinavia, embracing Norway and Sweden, with an area of more than 350,000 square miles, a tenth of all Europe, connected with the mainland by the isthmus of Finland, but otherwise girded in a great bow by the Atlantic, the North Sea, the Baltic, and the Gulf of Bothnia, and pointing southward.

Jütland or Denmark, beginning at the Elbe and the Trave and running north, embracing about of Europe, between the North Sea and the Baltic, low and flat. The subdivided peninsula of Holland, between the Rhine and the Ems, a flat plain, looking to the north.

The peninsula of Normandy and Brittany, between the Seine and the Loire, a rocky granite formation, jutting out into the Atlantic and faced by bold precipices.

Spain and Portugal, embracing about 220,000 square miles, about of Europe, rhomboidal in shape, almost insular in position, turned south-westerly, its surface a series of constantly rising terraces.

Italy, embracing of Europe, between the Alps and Sicily, and traversed by a mountain-range.

Turkey and Greece, or, summing it more strictly under one word, the Grecian peninsula, between the Danube and the Morea, a most minutely divided region of plateaus and mountain-chains; in truth, the most articulated peninsula in the world, and embracing of Europe.

The Crimea, a rhomboidal peninsula, turned to the south-its northern half a flat steppe, its southern a high plateau-the only peninsula of south-eastern Europe projecting into the Black Sea.

Every one of these peninsulas differs from every other in shape; every one has a distinct individuality impressed upon it. Within the smallest compass on earth, relatively speaking, there is found around Europe the very largest variety in its articulations. The Grecian peninsula finds its only superior on the north-west of Europe, in the island-system of England.

By means of this characteristic separation of so many more or less individualised parts of the continent through the agency of arms of the sea, the coast-line of Europe has been prolonged to an extraordinary length. The areas of the three continents of the Old World are as follows, in round numbers: Europe, 3,500,000 square miles; Africa, 11,800,000 square miles; and Asia, 19,300,000 square miles. Although the superficial contents of Africa are three times those of Europe, the length of the coastline is so far from being equal, that that of Europe is much the greater, being 25,400 miles. The Asiatic coastline is about one-third longer still, 32,900 miles; but as the area of Asia is more than five times that of Europe, a great part of the Asiatic coast-line, that on the north, from Novaia Zemlia to Kamtchatka, must be considered