passes through the rest.

But all the lakes of the northern plain are within the Dominion. Of these, the largest are Great Bear Lake, Great Slave Lake, and Lake Athabasca, all connected with the Mackenzie River, and Lake Winnipeg, which is discharged by the Nelson River into Hudson Bay.

Great Salt Lake, in Utah, receives most of the drainage of the Great Basin. Its waters are more salt and bitter than those of the sea. Other considerable bodies of water are Lake Chapala in Mexico, and Lake Nicaragua in Central America.

... One thing deserving of special notice in the physical geography of North America, is the way in which its river-basins are connected with one another-there being, in several cases, no intervening high ground between their respective waters. The source of one of the small tributaries of the Upper Mississippi is only a few miles' distance from a stream (the Red River) which flows into Lake Winnipeg, and there is nothing but a tract of meadow between the two. Again, from Lake Wollaston (one of the smaller lakes of the great northern plain, to the south-east of Lake Athabasca) there issue two streams, one at each extremity of the lake. One of these streams ultimately finds its way into the River Churchill, which discharges into Hudson Bay; the other passes into Lake Athabasca, which belongs to the basin of the Mackenzie River. This peculiarity in the river drainage of the North American continent results from the generally level nature of its vast interior, and is highly important, as adding to its facilities for extended inland navigation.

CLIMATE: The climate of the New World is slightly colder, in corresponding latitudes, than that of the Old World. This is the case both in North and South America, but it is more especially so in the former. This is easily accounted for. The broadest parts of America are those which stretch into its higher latitudes; within the Tropics, North America is narrowed by the near approach of the oceans upon either side.

The American climate is also, for the most part, moister than that of the eastern division of the globe. The quantity of rain which falls in some parts of tropical America is surprisingly great-exceeding greatly the rainfall of southern Asia and the neighbouring archipelago. Within temperate latitudes, the amount is generally greater than in corresponding regions of the Old World.

The eastern side of North America is colder than the western side, and is also liable to greater extremes of heat and cold at opposite seasons. In these respects, the northern half of the New World resembles the European and Asiatic continents, upon the other side of the globe. All the country to the east of the Rocky Mountains is liable to severe winters and to summers of Intense heat. The Atlantic coasts of the United States and the regions adjacent to the Gulf of St. Lawrence offer striking examples of this. Quebec is in nearly the same latitude as Paris, but it has a lower average of yearly temperature, while its summers are hotter and its winters colder than those of the French capital. The coast of Labrador stretches through the same parallels of latitude as the shores of Britain, but the climate of the two regions is widely different. The winter of Labrador is one of intense and long-continued severity, and its shores are rendered unapproachable by ice during many months of each year.

The islands of the West Indies, the coasts of Central America, the low plain at the foot of the Mexican plateau, and the southernmost portions of the United States, are the hottest regions of North America. The coldest parts are those that stretch from Hudson Bay towards the shores of the Arctic Ocean.

PRODUCTIONS: Of the natural productions of North America, the practically inexhaustible supply of the precious metals, as well as of the more useful metals and minerals, is a characteristic feature. The native vegetation is also particularly rich and varied. Both the native vegetation and zoology of America differ greatly from those of the castern continent.

MINERALS: The mineralogy of America is as equally varied as that of the Old World, and is perhaps, in some respects, richer. The country lying to the west of the Rocky Mountains is one of the chief gold-producing regions of the world. California, Colorado, Idaho, and Nevada, within the United States, and the whole of western and north-western Canada, are the great localities of auriferous deposits. Mexico is also a region of great mineral wealth, and its mines supplied at a former period considerable amounts both of gold and silver. The countries on the eastern side of North America-especially in the neighbourhood of the Alleghany Mountains and the St. Lawrence basin-are rich in the more useful metals and minerals-iron and other metals, with coal, The coalfields of the United States are of vast extent and great value. Coal also occurs in Eastern, Central, and Western Canada. The coalfields of the Dominion have an area of 65,000 square miles, or 6 times as large as those of all European countries taken together. But the 'black diamond' area in the United States is 3 times as large as that of Canada, or 18 times as large as all the coalfields of Europe. Canada is also rich in ores of iron, copper, and lead. The richest deposits of copper in the world are found in the country around Lake Superior.

Building-stones, such as granite, sandstone, limestone-the latter occurs most extensively in the great Central Plain—are abundantly distributed throughout North America, and beautiful marble and excellent slate are also found in several localities.

PLANTS: The native vegetation of the New World differs in many important particulars from that belonging to the continents of the Eastern Hemisphere. Many of the plants and trees that are common in the Old World are not found upon the opposite side of the Atlantic Ocean; while, on the other hand, the productions of the American soil are in numerous instances peculiar to that portion of the globe. Even in the case of plants which belong to the same genus (or family), the species that are found in the opposite hemispheres are nearly always distinct. These differences are independent of climate, for the plants (and also the members of the animal kingdom) that belong to either continent are continually transported by man to regions distant from their native seat, and are found to flourish wherever the conditions of soil and clim ate are suitable for their development.

The vegetation and zoology of the New World at the present time has be come, in virtue of such changes, different in many respects from what it was, when Europeans first planted their footsteps upon its shores. Numerous plants, and also numerous animals, which were then only found within the limits of Europe or Asia, now flourish within the valleys of the Mississippi and the St. Lawrence; while, on the other hand, the native productions of America have become distributed over the different regions of the Old World.

The characteristic differences between the vegetation of America and that of the continents belonging to the eastern half of the globe are least marked within high northerly latitudes, and become greater with every advance towards

more southern sky. The lands that lie in proximity to the Arctic Circle possess many features in common, alike in regard to plants and animals.

Of food-plants native to the New World, maize (or Indian corn), among the cereals, and the potato, among tuberous roots, are the two of greatest importance, and the distribution of which, through other lands, has conferred the greatest boon upon man. Maize is the only one of the cereals that is native to the American continent, but wheat, barley, and oats, in the middle and northern, and rice in the southern, parts of the continent, are more extensively cultivated.

The manioc (or cassava) and arrowroot-both belonging to the order of tubers' are also among the native food-plants of America. The maniocplant is a native of Central America, but is more abundantly distributed within the southern half of the New World. The tobacco-plant-now extensively diffused through other lands-is another of the characteristic productions of the American soil, though not exclusively a native of that region. The sugarcane, tobacco, and cotton plants are cultivated to an immense extent, principally in the south-eastern section of the United States. The vine is also extensively grown in California and Ontario.

Plants of the cactus tribe are among the native productions of tropical America. The azalea and magnolia, among the ornaments of our greenhouses, are also derived from the New World.

The forests of the North American continent are of vast extent, and the timber which they supply forms one of the most valuable of America's commercial products. The variety of trees--mostly of the deciduous kind-is astonishingly great. But they exhibit, in nearly all cases, specific differences from the like trees that flourish in the corresponding latitudes of Europe and Asia.

ANIMALS: When America was first visited by Europeans, it had none of the domesticated animals that are familiar to our common observation. Neither the horse, the ass, the common ox and sheep, the hog, the camel, nor the elephant, are native to the New World. Similarly, among carnivorous quadrupeds, the lion, tiger, leopard, and hyena are unknown in the American wilderness. The puma and the jaguar, natives of tropical America, are the most formidable of its carnivora; but they are decidedly inferior, both in strength and ferocity, to the lion and tiger of the Old World. In the higher latitudes of North America, the numerous wolves, foxes, and bears, with the Canadian lynx, exhibit a nearer approach to the zoology of correspondent regions in the eastern half of the globe, and the moosedeer or elk supplies a parallel to the reindeer of northern Europe.

The bison or American buffalo is one of the most characteristic animals native to the American prairie, but it is now almost exterminated. The muskox and other members of the deer kind also occur. The beaver and numerous fur-bearing animals abound in the colder latitudes of the American continent.

The birds of America, and also the reptiles and insects, are in nearly all cases different from those of other continents. The aquatic birds, within very high latitudes (that is, beyond the Arctic Circle), and also some of the members of the insect tribe in similar localities, offer the only apparent exception to this.

1. Tubers are those plants which have knobs or lamps attached to their roots. The potato and the yam are the two most important of the edible

tubers. The dahlia, among flowers, is a familia example of this class of roots. The dahlia is a native of Mexico.

The true humming-birds are peculiar to America. The rattlesnake and the boa-constrictor are also American. The moist climate and abundant vegetation of the New World favour the development of the class of life to which the various members of the reptile and insect orders belong.

INHABITANTS: The population of North America numbers about 98 millions, or 10 to the square mile-a density of only onetenth that of Europe, or one-fifth that of Asia, but exceeding that of Africa, and nearly twice that of South America. The vast majority of these are whites, members of the European division of mankind. The rest are Negroes, native Indians, and mixed races.

The native of America is the Red (or copper-coloured) Indian-one of the five leading varieties into which the human family is commonly divided. The numbers of this race have vastly diminished since the period of European settlement in the New World, and they are still diminishing rapidly. Within the whole vast territory of the United States, there are only about a quarter of a million of the native American race now left. They are more numerous within Mexico and the States of Central America, where the genuine Indians are intermixed with the half-castes.

The white population of the United States and the St. Lawrence Valley includes settlers from most European countries and their descendants, but those of British origin are by far the most numerous. Hence, the English language has become diffused over much the larger portion of the North American continent. Within tropical America, the Spanish tongue is generally prevalent, since the white population of Mexico and the Central American States is almost exclusively of Spanish origin.

DIVISIONS: The following are the principal divisions of the North American continent :

1. Arctic America, which includes Greenland and the adjacent Polar Archipelago.

2. British North America, which includes the Dominion of Canada and the Colony of Newfoundland.

3. The United States of America, a confederation of 48 States, 1 Federal District, and 2 Territories, which extends across the continent between the Dominion of Canada and Mexico, and also includes Alaska and Hawaii.

4. Mexico, another Federal Republic of 27 States, 1 Federal District, and 2 Territories.

5. Central America, which includes the Republics of Guatemala, Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, and the Colony of British Honduras.

6. The West Indies, a vast archipelago stretching from Florida to the mouth of the Orinoco. All the West Indian islands, with the exception of Haiti, which is divided between two Negro Republics, and Cała, which is now a Republic, are in the possession of European nations, and will therefore be grouped and described under (1) British West Indies, (2) French West Indies, (3) Dutch West Indies, and (4) Danish West Indies. Porto Rico belongs to the United States.

ARCTIC AMERICA may be said to include not only the islands and coasts actually within the Arctic Circle, but also the great belt of Polar lands as far south as the 60th parallel of N. lat., and thus comprises the whole of the great island of Greenland, with the adjacent Arctic Archipelago, the northern portion of the NorthWest Territories of Canada, and the United States Territory of Alaska.

GREENLAND.

GREENLAND may either be regarded as the largest member of the Arctic Archipelago, or, more correctly perhaps, as a Polar land distinct from America.

This huge Polar island, the largest in the world, if Australia is ranked as a continent, lies to the north-east of the mainland of North America, and is divided from Baffin Land and the Arctic Archipelago by a long channel, which, under various names-Davis Strait, Baffin Bay, Smith Sound, Kennedy Channel, and Robeson Channel-extends continuously from the open Atlantic to the "Palæocrystic Sea," as that part of the ice-covered Polar Ocean to the north of Robeson Channel is called. On the east, Greenland is divided by a broad channel-Denmark Strait-from Iceland.

From the furthest point yet reached—In about 85° 50' N. lat., or 434 miles from the Pole-to Cape Farewell, on the 60th parallel, 1670 miles to the south, and throughout its whole breadth of between 600 and 700 miles, Greenland may be said to be covered with one enormous glacier or " Vice-cap," the accumulation of ages, which, replenished by heavy snow-falls, is hundreds of feet in thickness, and, pressing downward, slowly grinds its way seaward, hollowing out the fiords that indent the land, and giving birth to the troops of icebergs that encumber the coast, or are floated southwards into the Atlantic by the cold Arctic currents. The fringe of green mosses and dwarf willows and birches that, in the brief summer, struggle into life between the glacier mountains and the shore, represents the only title which Greenland can now put forth to its name. But it seems certain that, as Onésime Reclus points out, at the time (983 A.D.) when Greenland was discovered by the Norsemen, its climate cannot have been at all so rigid as now. The Norsemen, doubtless, named it at the first sight of its coasts on a summer day, they settled on it, as a promising new home, and occupied 300 farms there, where now the only cultivation is in small artificial gardens and hot-beds. Greenland must then have been a habitable land, and—judging from the still remaining trunks, stumps of frozen foliage, &c.-it was probably forest-clad. But Iceland itself grew colder and rainier, and an unmelting icepack cut off communication with Greenland, and the Norse colonists were either destroyed or absorbed by the Eskimo tribes, who formed its only inhabitants, until, in 1721, Moravian missionaries from Denmark, with a Government escort, settled there to convert the natives, which they did in considerable numbers. The descendants of these Christianised Eskimos, with a few whites, who are missionaries, school-teachers, Government officers, or merchants, form a little colonial dependency of Denmark, with less than 10,000 inhabitants, and divided into two Inspectorates. Of the 176 inhabited settlements, the most noteworthy

1. i.e., Sea of Ancient Ice.