Europa

EUROPE is the smallest of those divisions of the landsurface of the globe which are usually distinguished by the conventional name of continents; but favoured as it is at once by its position, its configuration, and its climate, it has played the most important part in the modern history of the world, more especially since the 16th century. The ultimate civilization of mankind must in great measure be wha,t Europe makes it; and though, as centuries roll on, the auxiliary energies of other regions and races, receiving new impulse and development, will undoubtedly lend potent contributions to the common historic movement, the period must still be distant when Europe shall have fallen from its position of controller and pioneer. It has justly become a commonplace of geography to describe it as a mere peninsula. of Asia, but, except in a purely geographical aspect, it is a peninsula as the head is a peninsula of the body. Its individuality and its solidarity with the neighbouring continents, its originality and its indebtedness, must be equally emphasized if a just conception is to be formed of its characteristics. All its dominant and, perhaps, nearly all its distinguishable peoples, its languages, its religions, its philosophies, its social organizations, have had their origin outside of its boundaries, and have been forced by modern science to recognize their kindred elsewhere. But under its modifying influences everything has been deeply and permanently differentiated: its people are more thoroughly conscious of their dissimilarities from, than of their consanguinity with, the peoples of the East and the South; its dominant religion at least has in large measure forgotten or belied its original character and scope; its philosophies have taken colouring and shape from the practical and political life of the people; and its social organizations have been disintegrated and re-formed under the pressure of new necessities and desires. And in a way in which they have never been realized before, it has within the present century realized two master principles of progress—the regularity of nature and its amanability to multiplex investigation and control, and the necessity of impartial recognition at once of the moral individuality of the individual and the social and political solidarity of the several members of the community.

Though Europe is naturally the best known of all the regions of the globe, yet even of its physical features an absolutely correct registration has not been attained. It is the only continent of which we possess an approximately complete cartography; but in spite of the geodetic labours which have been carried on since about the middle of last century with ever growing activity, much has still to be laid down on very unsatisfactory data. While in some districts, for instance, of England or France, we can find on our maps the exact locality of every hamlet or homestead, every streamlet or clump of trees, there are portions of several other countries where the main physical features are but vaguely indicated. A considerable part of Finland is practically unexplored; and it was not until 1875 that the labours of Kanitz furnished a fair representation of the Balkan range. Nor is it only about such outlying regions as Turkey and Finland that our information is either scanty or of the most recent acquisition; the topographical survey of Switzerland, which first provided the Alpine traveller with an authentic guide, was completed by Dufour only in 1865, and the corresponding surveys of England, Italy, Spain, Russia, <fcc., are still in progress. Till the last country in Europe has been thus triangulated, we must be content with more or less approximate estimates of areas and distances: in two recent statements of the area of Portugal there is a difference of no less than 104 English square miles (4 ’ 89 German geog. sq. m.,or 269 05 sq. kil.),— so that the possible error for the whole of the continent must be something considerable. Even the astronomical distance between Paris and Berlin cannot be given with absolute accuracy.

Owing to its peninsular conformation the present boundaries of Europe are on three sides easily stated: its western shores form the irregular rim of the great basin of the North Atlantic, and bear witness in their dilapidated headlands and sandy dunes to the power and fury of its tides and storms; on the N. it lies along the Arctic Ocean; aud on the S. it is separated from Africa and Asia by the Mediterranean, the Sea of Marmora, the Black Sea, and their connecting straits. Towards the east, on the other hand, the boundary is almost purely conventional: the Ural Mountains, indeed, may be regarded as furnishing a sort of natural barrier, but they leave a considerable gap both towards the N. and the S. In the S. the river Ural is usually accepted as the line of demarcation, though the plain through which it flows is perfectly similar on both sides, and it forms neither a geological, faunal, botanical, political, nor historical limit. In the administrative divisions of the Russian empire, which has no desire to make a severe distinction between its Asiatic and European territory, even the line of the Ural Mountains is disregarded: 39,545 square miles (1860 02 German geog. sq. miles, 102,4181 sq. kil.) of the government of Orenburg, 49,333 square miles (2320 ’ 425 German geog. sq. m., 127,769 ’ 3 sq. kil.) of the government of Perm, and 297 - 6 sq. miles (14 Germ, geog. sq. m., 812’9 sq. kil.) of the government of Ufa lie to the E. of the range. Across the peninsula between the Black Sea and the Caspian, the line of the Caucasus is now accepted as the boundary. The British islands have been separated from the Continent in a comparatively recent geological period, and really form the prominences of a submerged plateau which at one time must have presented a long and regular coast to the Atlantic. Iceland, though distant more than 600 miles, and geologically, it may be, of indej>endent origin, is usually reckoned as an outlying portion of Europe. Nova Zemlya and Waigatch may also be included; but Spitzbergen is more accurately assigned to the Arctic archipelago. In the Mediterranean the Balearic islands are conventionally attached to Spain, Corsica to France, and Sardinia, Sicily, and the Pantellarian grouplet to Italy. Malta is also regarded as European. Among the central islands of the great archipelago between the Balkan peninsula and Asia Minor it is hard to find a line of demarcation; but the Cyclades, as part of the kingdom of Greece, may be considered to belong to the western, and the rest of the islands to the eastern continent. Properly speaking, they are both Asiatic and European, and for that very reason neither European nor Asiatic. '

The four corners of Europe are marked by the mouth of the Kara ou the Arctic Ocean in the N.E., 69° N. lat. and 65° E. long.; by the North Cape on the Arctic Ocean in the N. W., 71° 1Γ N. lat. and 25° 50' E. long.; by Cape Tarifa on the Atlantic in the S.W., 36° N. lat. and 5° 36' W. long.; and by Cape Apsheron on the Caspian Sea in the S.E., 40° 12' N. lat. and 50° 20' E. long. Its most northern point as a continent is Cape Nordkun in Norway, 71° 7' N. lat.; its most southern, Cape Matapan in Greece, 36° 24' N. lat.; its most western, Cape da Roca in Portugal, 9° 31' W. long.; and its most eastern, a spot at the junction of the Ural range with the Grossland’s Ridge in 66° E. long. A line drawn from Cape St Vincent in Portugal to the Ural Mountains near Ekaterinburg has a length of 3293 miles, and finds it centre in the W. of Russian Poland. From the mouth of the Kara to the mouth of the Ural river the direct distance is 1600 miles, but the boundary line has a length of 2400 miles. The total area of the continent, according to Behm and Wagner’s calculation, is 179,833’37 German sq. miles, 9,902,149 sq. kilometres, or 3,823,383*32 English sq. miles; so that it forms rather more than a thirteenth part of the whole land surface of the globe. Asia is about 4⅜ times, and America about 4∣ times as large. The total population in round numbers is 309,178,300, which gives an average of 1719 for the German mile, 3U2 for the square kilometre, and 80 8 for the English sq. mile—considerably more than the average of any other of the continents.

Two of the most striking features in the general conformation of Europe are the great number of its primary and secondary peninsulas, and the consequent exceptional development of its coast-line,—an irregularity and development which have been the most potent of the physical factors of its history. The peninsulas which are of most historic interest are those which trend southward into the Mediterranean:—the Balkan peninsula terminating in the wonderful cluster of peninsulas aud islands which bears the name of Greece, the long Italian peninsula with Sicily at its foot, and the massive Pyrenean peninsula, so thoroughly shut off by its mountain isthmus that in ordinary language it is distinguished as the Peninsula par excellence. The northern peninsulas are much less symmetrical in their arrangement, and have exercised less influence on the history of Europe. The total coast-line is estimated at 19,820 miles, of which about 3600 belong to the Arctic Ocean, 8390 to the Atlantic, and 7830 to the Black Sea and Mediterranean. This gives 1 mile of coast to 192 miles of area, which is a higher rate than that of any of the other continents. Much of this coast-line, more especially in Norway and Spain, is of course practically useless as far as commerce is concerned, owing to the absence of natural harbours; but even when such portions are withdrawn, the facilities for maritime activity are exceptionally great. That so small a part of the total belongs to the Arctic Ocean, which lies ice-bound during many months of the year, and so large a part to the Mediterranean, with its comparative freedom from winter and storm, has been of no small importance to the progress of the European peoples.

The coast-line of Europe is in its general features very much the same as it was at the commencement of the true historic period; but when it is examined in detail it is found to have undergone a number of important local changes, some at least of which are due to causes that are at work over very extensive areas. These changes may be conveniently classified under four heads :—the formation of deltas by the alluvium of rivers; the increase of the land-surface due to upheaval; the advance of the sea by reason of its own erosive activity; and the advance of the sea through the subsidence of the land. The actual form of the coast, however, is frequently due to the simultaneous or successive action of several of the causes—sea and river and subterranean forces helping or resisting each other. Our information is naturally most complete in regard to the Mediterranean coasts, as these were the best known to our first bookwriting nations, There w e find that all the great rivers have been successfully at work—more especially the Rhone, the Ebro, and the Pυ. The activity of the Rhone, indeed, as a maker of new land, is really astonishing. The tower of St Louis, erected on the coast in 1737, is now upwards of four miles inland; the city of Arles is said to be nearly twice as far from the sea as it was in the Roman period. The present St Gilles was probably a harbour when the Greeks founded Marseilles, and Aigues Mortes, which took its place in the Middle Ages, was no longer on the coast in the time of St Louis. According to a calculation quoted by M. Reclus, the total alluvium of the river in the space of a year is 17,000,000 cubic metres, or 590,000,000 cubic feet; and this estimate is supported by M. Reybert, who found that the new land formed between 1841 and 1859 implied an annual deposit of nearly 19,000,000 cubic metres, or 671,000,000 cubic feet. The increase of the land is observable, not only in the immediate neighbourhood of the mouth, but round almost the whole of the gulf of Lyons, and is, of course, partly due to the alluvium of minor rivers. At the mouth of the Hérault, according to Fischer, the coast advances at least two metres or about seven feet annually; and it requires great labour to keep the harbour of Cette from being silted up. The Po is even more efficient than the Rhone, if the size of its basin be taken into account. Were it not counteracted in some measure, it would soon, with the assistance of the Isonzo, the Adige, and the neighbouring streams, turn the northern part of the Adriatic into a plain. Ravenna, which was at one time an insular city like Venice, has now a wide stretch of downs partly covered with pine forest between it and the sea. Aquileia, one of the greatest seaports of the Mediterranean in the early centuries of the Christain era, is now 7 miles from the coast, and Adria, which gives its name to the sea, is 13. And this increase of the land has gone on in spite of the fact that both cities are on the northern part of an area of subsidence which apparently extends southwards along the whole Dalmatian coast. The islands on which Venice is built have sunk about three feet since the 16th century: the pavement of the square of St Mark’s has frequently required to be raised, and the boring of a well has shown that a layer of vegetable remains, indicating a flora identical with that observed at present on the neighbouring mainland, exists at a depth of 400 feet below the alluvial deposits. At Zara ancient pavements and mosaics are found below the sea-level, and the district at the mouth of the Narenta has been changed into a swamp by the advance of the sea. A process of elevation, on the other hand, is indicated along nearly all the coasts of Sicily, round the bay of Naples and the bay of Gaieta, at the southern end of Sardinia, the east of Corsica, and perhaps in the neighbourhood of Nice. The borings of pholads are found at a height of 600 feet on Monte Pellegrino; the ancient harbour which gave its name to Palermo (Panormus) is now nearly covered by the modern town; and the Grotto of San Ciro, which now lies 6000 feet inland, and at a height of more than 220 feet, must have had a direct communication with the sea during the period of human occupation. That the rise thus rendered evident is taking place over a wide area is shown by similar facts observed on the African coast. The Tunisian harbour of Porto Farina, which had a depth of 30 or 40 feet in last century, can hardly be trusted for 2; and this change can only be very partially due to the action of the Medjenda river, as it brings down but little alluvium. If the movement be maintained the Mediterranean will again be divided into two basins by the old ridge between Sicily and Africa whose existence has been posited to explain the present distribution of zoological fossils. Passing eastward to the Balkan peninsula, we find considerable changes on the coast-line of Greece; but as they are only repetitions on a smaller scale of the phenomena already described, it is sufficient to indicate the Gulf of Arta and the mouth of the Spercheius as two of the more important localities. The latter especially is interesting to the historian as well a3 to the geologist, as the river has greatly altered the physical features of one of the world’s most famous scenes—the battle-field of Thermopylae.

If we proceed to the Atlantic seaboard we observe, as we might expect, great modifications in the embouchures of the Garonne and the Loire, but by far the most remarkable oscillations of sea and land have taken place in what are emphatically the Low Countries of Europe. It is one of the familiar facts of geography that a large par,t of the soil of Holland with its villages and cities is many feet below the level of the sea; but it is not so generally known that about a fifth of the area of the country is thus situated. The story of the contest carried on along the coast between man and nature has often been told, and is well worth the telling. If success is to be measured by the amount of territory acquired, nature has hitherto had the best of the battle, and no wonder, if it be true that the very ground on which man has built his ramparts against the sea is slowly sinking under his feet. Such, at least, is the opinion of Elie de Beaumont and other geologists of note: in fact the whole maritime region from the Scheldt to the Weser is an area of subsidence. The Dutchman, however, does not intend to give up the contest. It was only in 1395 that he finally lost possession of the 500,000 hectares or 1,236,570 English acres of good land which are now covered by the Zuyder Zee; aud he hopes to get the best part of it back again. A scheme has been proposed by which the whole southern portion, with an area of 195,000 hectares (481,872 acres) will be inclosed by a dyke extending from Enkhuizen to Kämpen; and the feasibility of the enterprise is sufficiently attested by the brilliant success of the Haarlem engineers who, at a cost of less than £7 65,000, have recovered the area of the Haarlem Lake which had been lost in the 16th century. Further east along the coast, between the Elbe and the Eider, it is hard to say whether land or sea is gaining: on the one hand it is stated that the ruins of the castle of chlei are now covered by the sea, and that a forest of historic identity is totally destroyed; while on the other it is equally certain that the parish of Busum in the north part of Ditmarsh was made laud-fast only in the 16th century, that the Friedrick Koog, an area of new alluvial land five miles long and two miles Droad, was endyked in 1853, and that islands are being formed further out towards the sea.

The Baltic shores of Germany display the same phenomena of local gain and loss; and there is more than a suspicion that the whole line lies along an area of subsidence. In the western section the inroads of the sea have been very extensive: the islaud of Rügen would no louger serve for the disembarkation of an army like that of Gustavus Adolphus; Wolliu and Usedom are growing gradually less; large stretches of the mainland are fringed with submerged forests; and at intervals the site of well-known villages is occupied by the sea. Towards the east the great rivers are successfully working in the opposite direction. In the gulf of Dantzic the alluvial deposits of the Vistula cover an area of 1G00 square kilometres or 615 square miles; in the 13th century the knights of Marienburg inclosed with dykes 900 sq. kil., or 346 sq. m., and 180 sq. kil., or 69 sq. m., were added in the course of the 14th. The Memel is silting up the Kurische Haff, which, like the Frische Haff, is separated from the open sea by a line of dunes comparable with those of the Landes in France.

A large amount of evidence has gradually accumulated in favour of the hypothesis that the Scandinavian peninsula is in process of elevation. Within the last two centuries fiords have been left dry or broken into lakes, reefs have been turned into islands, bays into pasture grounds. Μ. Reclus has pointed out that the presence of certain beds of oysters goes to show that the lakes Malar, Hjelmar, and Wener are remains of a channel which at no distant date communicated between the Baltic and the North Sea; but the facts of marine distribution, as stated by Forbes, are rather against the opinion of Celsius, that there was also a connexion with the Arctic Ocean as late as the time of the first Roman exploration. At Pitea, in the Gulf of Bothnia, the land is said to have gained a mile in 45 years, and at Lulea a mile in 28 years.

It is only right, however, to mention that the statements made in.the preceding paragraphs in regard to areas of subsidence and elevation are by several geologists considered to be of very dubious validity. The data, they believe, are much too slight and fragmentary for the conclusions, and some of the most important are open to quite different interpretations. The so-called strand or coast-lines of the Scandinavian peninsula, for example, are still the subject of keen controversy among northern investigators, and a large polemical literature is the result. Till the question as to the origin of these remarkable appearances is finally settled, the recent elevation of the peninsula must be regarded as little more than a provisional hypothesis.

The changes briefly indicated above take place so gradually for the most part that it requires careful observation and comparison of data to establish their reality. The Dutchman does not feel the subsidence of his well-defended flats, and the Norwegian is quite unconscious that he is being raised along with his pine-clad hills. It is very different with those changes which we usually ascribe to volcanic agency: they force themselves on the attention, and find a permanent place in the memory of the people. And yet it is only the scientific registration of the phenomena which gives any accurate idea of their frequency and extent. To the popular apprehension Europe is a fairly stable portion of terra firma, and we are accustomed to contrast the uncomfortable tendency to oscillation exhibited by such a region as Colombia or Peru in South America. But it is not so stable as it appears. Besides the great outlying “hearth” of Iceland, there are four centres of volcanic activity in Europe—all of them, however, situated in the Mediterranean. Vesuvius on the western coast of Italy, Etna in the island of Sicily, and Stromboli in the Lipariau group, have been familiarly known from the earliest historic times; but the fourth has only attracted particular attention since last century. It lies in the Archipelago, on the southern edge of the Cyclades, near the little group of islets called Santorin. The region was evidently highly volcanic at an earlier period, for NIilo, one of the nearest of the islands, is simply a ruined crater still presenting smoking solfataras and other traces of former activity. The present crater of Santorin is subaqueous, but it has already raised a considerable mass of material above the surface. The devastations produced by the eruptions of the European volcanoes are usually confined within very narrow limits; and it is only at long intervals that any part of the continent is visited by a really formidable earthquake. There is little danger when the tremor has to be verified by glass cylinders on a sanded floor. Minor shocks, however, are exceedingly numerous. Dr Volger found that during the first fifty years of the 19th century the average number per annum was, in Switzerland, no less than fifty; and he indicates the following localities as habituellen Stossgebiete or areas of frequent disturbance:—(1) in the region of the Jura, the valley of the Birs to the S. of B^sel, the valley of the Orbe, the Val de Travers, the valley of St Imier, the district at the confluence of the Aar and the Limmat, Ac.; and (2) in the Alpine region, the valley of the Durance and the Drac, of the Arc and the Isère, nearly the whole line of the Arve, the upper valley of the Rhone almost without interruption to the Lake of Geneva, part of the valley of Adige to the S. of Trent, and the valleys of the Drave and the Gail to the W. of their confluence. A table drawn up by Dr Suess registers about 116 earthquakes in Lower Austria from 1021 down to 1870, and of these 53 belong to the present century. Of all European earthquakes in modern times, the most destructive are that of Lisbon in 1755, and that of Calabria in 1783; the devastation produced by the former has become a classical instance of such disasters in popular literature, and by the latter 100,000 people are said to have lost their lives. Calabria again suffered severely in 1865 and 1870.

If Russia be left out of account, Europe may be generally characterized as a mountainous region,—the ratio of highlands and lowlands being, according to Von Kloden’s calculation, approximately as follows: [table]

In other words, the purely continental portion has 2L44 per cent, of highlands to 78'56 per cent, of lowlands; the peninsular portion 76'74 per cent, to 23*26 per cent.; Great Britain and Ireland 51'87 per cent, to 4§‘l3 per cent.; and the remaining islands 73*92 to 26 08. There are none of the individual mountains that attain more than a moderate elevation if they are compared with the mountains of Asia and South America. Mont Blanc, the loftiest of all, has an altitude of only 15,781 feet, while Μ. Everest, in the Himalayas, is 29,000 feet high, and Chimborazo and Aconcagua, in the Andes, are respectively 20,677 and 23,910.

The whole continent is formed on a small scale of relief, though this scale is not so small as has usually been stated on the authority of Humboldt. The mean elevation of Asia, according to his calculations, was 351 metres (1151 E. ft.); of South America, 344 metres (1128 E. ft.); of North America, 227 metres (744 E. ft.); and of Europe only 201 metres (669 E. ft.) In 1874 Dr Gustav Leipoldt published the results of a new calculation, which, being carefully conducted and based on a much more extensive collection of data, must replace the estimates of Humboldt. The following is a table of his principal findings, giving an average of 296 ’ 838 metres, or 973 - 7 English feet :— [table]

If the materials which are employed in producing the relief of the various countries were equally distributed over the surface of the continent, their respective contributions would arrange them in the following order :— [table]

It is noticeable that Russia stands first on the list on account of its immense area, in spite of the fact that its mean elevation is less than that of nearly every other country.

The central ridge of Europe is formed by a complex of from thirty to fifty distinct wzcns(∕⅛, which from time immemorial have borne the name of the Alps, or, if the usual etymology be correct, the White Mountains.’ They are closely grouped together over an area of about 74,000 or 75,000 square miles, extending from 5° to 16° E. long., and curving round from the Gulf of Lyons to the neighbourhood of Vienna. According to Dr Leipoldt, if the material of which they are composed were equally distributed over the surface of the continent it would raise the level 27 ’ 23 metres, or 89 English feet. Mount St Gotthard, situated in 8° 36' E. long., is usually considered as the central massif; but instead of being, as was long supposed, the highest part of the system, and consequently of the European continent, it is really overtopped by a large number of the other groups. The honour of being the loftiest summit is now, as already stated, assigned to Mont Blanc, which, in its terminal peak, named Dufour Spitz, in memory of the great surveyor of Switzerland, reaches a height of 15,781 feet. In general the mountains of the western parts of the range are loftier and more closely ranked, while those towards the east not only diminish in height but spread out over a wider area; and on the whole the southern sides are steeper than the northern. Full details of the intricate divisions of the Alps are given in a separate article. As the birth-place of its mightiest rivers, the natural barrier between its mightiest peoples, a prime factor in the distribution of its climates, and in modern times the noblest of all international “playgrounds,” the Alps act a part of multiform munificence in the economy of the continent.

With the exception of the Pyrenees and its dependencies, all the mountains of southern and central Europe may be regarded as secondary portions of the general Alpine system. If it were possible with more than human reach of sight to take an outlook northwards from some commanding peak on the northern skirts of the great chain, the whole country for two hundred miles and more would appear occupied by irregular lines and groupings of mountains and hills rising from a kind of table-land, and intersected by the deepcut valleys of the larger rivers. Towards the north-west the most conspicuous heights are those of the Jura proper, which runs parallel with the Alps, and is only separated from them by the valleys of the Rhone and the Aar, the latter a main tributary of the Rhine. The German Jura trends north-east, the Black Forest north from the eastern extremity of the Jura proper, and fronting the Black Forest on the other side of the Rhine lie the Vosges. Further north the Rhine valley is defined on the west by the Hardt, the Hochwald, the Eifel, and the Ardennes; and on the east by the Odenwald, the Westerwald, and the Taunus. North of the German Jura lie the Franconian heights, which are separated by the valley of the Main from the Spessart, the Rhön, and the Thüringerwald. From the Thüringerwald south-east run the successive clusters of the Frankenwald and the Fichtelgebirge; and from this last massif eastward extends the Erzgebirge as far as the valley of the Elbe, and south-eastwards the Böhmerwald, along the valley of the Danube. Beyond the Elbe, and forming the eastern rim of the upper basin, are the Riesengebirge and the so-called Sudetic chain, which, by its southern extremity, approaches the Carpathian mountains; and these again, in company with the Transylvanian mountains, curve south and enclose the great Hungarian plain. The Balkan to the south of the Danube is practically on the one hand a continuation of the Transylvanian range, and on the other it is connected by the mountains of Carinthia, Dalmatia, Bosnia, and Servia with the eastern extremity of the Alps. The Apennines are still more closely connected with the western extremity, and the mountains of Auvergne and the Cevennes in France may also be regarded as outliers of the system.

Several of the ranges, however, are sufficiently distinct in position and general characteristics to be treated apart. The Apennines form an uninterrupted chain extending south to the Straits of Messina. Their mean height varies from 2600 feet in one part to 6400 in another; and among the loftiest peaks are Monte Cimone, 7060; Alpe di Cam-poraghena, 6537; Monte Sibilla, 7188; Gransasso, 9493; La Majella, 9314; Monte Pollino, 7441; and Aspromonte, 6375. The Carpathians are about 520 miles long, and attain their greatest elevation in Butschetie, which has an altitude of 9528 feet. The declivities of the range are steepest on the southern side. The Balkans, or Haemus, run 400 miles east and west to the south of the Danube valley, Their mean elevation is about 5000-5600 feet; but it is only from the southern side that they present a really mountainous appearance; on the northern they gradually descend by a succession of terraces, and, with few exceptions, the summits have gently rounded contours. The culminating point is Tchar Dagh, which rises to a height of about 9700 feet. Connected with the Balkans by its western extremity is the range of the Despυto Dagh, or Rhodope, which stretches eastward along the north of the Aegean, and in some points reaches a height of 8000 feet. Nearly the whole country to the south in Thessaly and Greece is occupied by irregular groups and lines of mountains and hills, among which the most important are the Pindus aud Olympus. Besides the Alpine system and the secondary systems which are grouped along with it, there are several others rendered quite distinct by their position and structure.

The Pyrenees are next to the Alps in elevation. They extend across the isthmus between France and Spain for a distance of 240 miles, and are practically continued by the Cantabrian Mountains for 260 miles more. The loftiest summit, Mont Perdu, has an altitude of 11,270 feet. The south side of the Pyrenees proper is the more rugged and precipitous; but the Cantabrian Mountains present their steepest face to the north. All the minor mountain ranges of Spain are connected with eaeh other and with the Pyrenees. The highest is the Sierra Nevada in the south. The chain of the Dovre-Fjeld, Dofrines, or Scandinavian Alps is about 1000 miles in length, and has a general elevation of from 3000 to 6000 feet. Properly speaking, it is not so much a range of mountains as a plateau, broken up by deep-cut ravines and fiords. The western side is precipitous, and the eastern descends gradually to the Gulf of Bothnia. The Urals extend from north to south through 20° of latitude, with a breadth of about 40 miles. They rise slowly from the plain on both sides, and at the place where they are crossed by the road from Moscow to Siberia the ascent and descent is hardly noticeable. A considerable proportion of the range lies between 3000 and 4000 feet above the sea; a few peaks attain an altitude of 5000; and one, Toll-pors, is not much under 5500.

If the European mountains are arranged according to their greatest elevations, they rank as follows :—(1) the Swiss Alps, with their highest peaks 15,000 feet or upwards; (2) the Sierra Nevada, the Pyrenees, and Etna, about 11,000 feet; (3) the Apennines, the Corsican Mountains, the Carpathians, the Balkans, and the Despoto Dagh, from 8000 to 9000; (4) the Guadarrama, the Scandinavian ïïlps, the Dinaric Alps, the Greek Mountains, and the Cevennes, between 6000 and 8000; (5) the mountains of Auvergne, the Jura, the Riesengebirge, the mountains of Sardinia, Majorca, Minorca, and the Crimea, the Black Forest, the Vosges, and the Scottish Highlands, from 4000 to 6000.

The table given on page 686 furnishes a comparative view of the principal European streams taken in the order of their length.

In various parts of Europe, more particularly in calcareous regions, there are subterranean or partially subterranean rivers. Of these the most remarkable are the Sorgue of Vaucluse, the Touvre of Angoulême, the Timavo of Istria, and the Poik or Γlanina. The first has been traced for 10 or 15 miles below ground; and the Timavo when it issues from the mountain is already navigable. Along the French coast several subterranean affluents of the Mediterranean have been discovered, and some of them are evidently of considerable size. The Garonne itself, which rises in the glaciers of Mount Maladetta, passes under Mont Poumar for a distance of 4 kilometres. The subterranean course of the streams is frequently indicated by peculiar vents or pits caused by the subsidence of the soil; they are popularly known in Greece as catavothra, in Carinthia as dolinas, aud in France by a great number of local names, such as embues, gourgs, boit-tout, anselmoη*, <fcc.

Europe has no Niagara, and, indeed, few of its larger rivers present anything approaching to a real cataract. The Rhine takes a plunge of about 50 feet at Schaffhausen; and there are a series of rapids in the lower course of the Dnieper and the Dniester. In Sweden the Gotha-Elf falls 100 feet at Trollhata; the Hjommel Sayka or Hare’s leap of the Lulea is 250 feet high; and the Riukan Fos or “Smoking Force” at Mjösvand is no less than 800. The famous Staubbach in the neighbourhood of Lauterbrunnen has a descent of 980 feet, but it is a mere brook, and in summer almost dries up; it takes its name, as is well known, from the dust-like appearance of the spray into which the water is changed by the tremendous descent.

Several of the more important rivers are of very irregular flow, and some are subject to really formidable floods. In 1877 there were disastrous inundations of the Danube: 12,000 people were rendered homeless in one of the suburbs of Buda Pesth, hundreds of houses were undermined, while villages were submerged, and large quantities of property were swept away. The floods iu the Netherlands the same year were severe enough to necessitate Government help for the sufferers. Large area3 in Saxony and Silesia were under water; the Elbe, the Vistula, the Nogat, and the Oder, all overflowed their banks or burst their dikes, it was feared that the whole line of railway between Thorn and Posen would be carried away, and in some districts there was considerable loss of life. If all the damage produced in this way since the beginning of the century could be calculated, it would be found to represent an enormous sum. The floods of the Loire alone, in 1856, carried off about .£8,000,000 worth of property; and those in the south of France in 1875 caused a loss of about .£3,000,000. In most Continental countries there have beeu consequently undertaken extensive engineering works, partly to prevent inundations, and partly to render the rivers more serviceable for navigation and irrigation. France has been especially active in this matter, several of her most important streams being very difficult to regulate. The Loire, for example, varies at Orleans from 25 cubic metres or 780 feet per second to 10,000 metres or 315,000 feet in the same time; the Saône, in 1855, varied from 3,825,450 cubic feet per minute to 174,086; and the Rhone at Geneva, in 1858, which was a minimum year, from 740,000 cubic feet to 195,000. The engineering works have been especially successful on the Seine and Yonne, where several new methods have been tested for storing the surplus water of one season, and utilizing it during the period of deficient supply. In Italy the Po, the Arno, and the Tiber are notorious for their floods; but the first two are now among the most striking examples of a satisfactory system of embankment. At Cremona, on the Po, which is 171 miles inland and 104 feet above sea-level, the flood of 1840 rose 18 feet, that of 1855 rose 19 feet, and that of 1857 20 feet, above summer low-water. On the last occasion the banks above Cremona were burst, and a vast area of country was submerged; but such a disaster is now comparatively rare. For the irrigation of the Lombard plain no less than 762,838 cubic feet per minute are drawn off by the canals.

Comparative View of the Principal European Rivers taken in the Order of their Length. (Based on Glogau’s Table.) [table]

Since the city of Rome has again become the capital of Italy the attention of the Italians has been specially turned to the Tiber, and several schemes of Herculean magnitude have been discussed. Garibaldi’s project was adopted by both housee of the Parliament and sanctioned by the Government in 1875. During the present century the Danube, which is the most international of European rivers, has been greatly improved as a water-way, by the rectification of its course in the neighbourhood of Vienna, by the clearing of the passage of the Iron Gates, and by the maintenance of a proper channel at the delta. It is almost needless to mention the works that have been carried on for the deepening of the seaward section of all the greater rivers, and the removal of the bars at their mouths; perhaps in this department the most remarkable results are exhibited by the Clyde.

In the accompanying table, for which we are indebted to Glogau, the principal lakes of Europe are arranged according to their size. If we examine their distribution we find they can easily be classified into groups. The [table]

Alpine lakes break up into a southern and northern subdivision—the former consisting of Lago Maggiore, Lago di Como, Lago d’Iseo, and Lago di Garda, all connected by affluents with the system of the Po; and the latter the lake of Geneva threaded by the Rhone, Lakes Constance, Zurich, Neufchatel, Biel, and other Swiss lakes belonging to the basin of the Rhine, and a few of minor importance belonging to the Danube. As factore in the historical development of the Alpine countries the first rank must be assigned to Geneva, Constance, and Como. Next in interest to the Alpine group comes the Swedish—Wener, Wetter, Malar, and Hjelmar, lying between the Baltic Sea and the Skagerrack, and nearly as famous as their Scotch and English rivals for the beauty of their scenery. The North Russian lakes, Ladoga, Onega, &c., are mainly noticeable as the largest members of what in some respects is the most remarkable system of lakee in the continent—the Finno-Russian, which consists of an almost countless number of comparatively small irregular basins formed in the surface of a granitic plateau. In Finland proper they occupy no less than a twelfth of the total area. It is impossible to take individual account of the multitudinous small lakes that diversify the surface of every country in Europe, with the partial exception of Spain; but their influence on the climate and hydrography of the continent must not be overlooked. All of them help to increase the area of evaporation, and many even of those which are almost nameless act as reservoirs for rivers. Nearly all the rivers of Sweden, for example, have their origin in a lake or tarn; and the same is the case with many of the streams of the northern Pyrenees. The total area of the lakes given in the table is no less than 28,450 square miles, or about the united area of the Netherlands and Switzerland.

A few of the number are very shallow. The Neusiedler See, for example (the Peiso Lacus of the Latins and Fertotava of the Hungarians), completely dried up in 1864, and left its bed covered for the most part with a deposit of salt. Others not mentioned in the table have been partially or completely drained by human labour. The Copais in Bce∩tia was attacked by Greek engineers as early as the time of Alexander the Great; but the tunnels which they constructed to carry off its waters have been choked up, aud the lake is again in a state of nature. Lake Fucino or Lago Celano, in the Abruzzo in Italy, was doomed to destruction by the emperor Claudius; but the works which he constructed proved ineffectual, and it was not till 1862 that a large part of the basin was turned into dry land. The progress of agriculture has greatly diminished the quantity of marsh land in Europe, and there are only one or two really extensive regions which deserve the name. Most important of all are the Minsk marshes in Russia, and on these large encroachments are gradually being made. The draining of the Pomptine marshes in Italy made Pope Pius VII. famous in the 18th century; and at the present moment those of Ferrara are sharing the same fate.

Geologists have as yet come to no agreement regarding the origin of the principal mountain ranges, and still less do they furnish a consistent and connected history of the shaping of the continent. It will consequently be sufficient to indicate the general distribution of the various formations, and the more important basins of deposition for the sedimentary rocks. The typical basin is that which takes its name from Paris: in it the successive stratifications are arranged in an exceptionally symmetrical manner. To the south-east lies the basin of Bordeaux, separated by a plateau of granite and gneiss; to the north, on the other side of the Channel, the London basin; and to the northeast the basin of the lower Rhine. Further east conies the basin of the lower Weser, divided into two almost independent portions by the Harz mountains; and to the south-east is the Prague basin, which presents only fragmentary remains of its sedimentary deposits. Nearly the half of European Russia belongs to the Moscow basin, which, in the south-east, is conterminous with the probably more modern basin of the Caspian. The whole of the south of the continent, from the Pyrenees to the Caucasus, belongs to the Mediterranean basin, which is one of the greatest in the world, and has its northern limit marked by the Cevenncs, the Jura, the Thüringerwald, the Böhmerwald, and the Λrratyne plateau. The total surface area occupied by the plutonic and metamorphic rocks is far from inconsiderable; but, with the exception of the great mass of the Scandinavian peninsula, Finland, and Lapland, and the long line of the Urals, the individual portions are of comparatively small extent. Tn the Spanish peninsula they stretch from Corunna south to the Tagus, appear again in the neighbourhood of Evora, form the western part of the Sierra Guadarrama, and rise in islets above the Silurian formations to the south. In France they constitute, not only the great plateau already mentioned between the Paris and the Bordeaux basin, but also the massive peninsula of Brittany; and in eastern Germany they are the predominant rocks of the Erzgebirge, the Sudetic chain, the Böhmerwald, and the inclosed area. They again appear in isolated masses of considerable extent along the inner side of the Carpathians; and in Turkey they reach from Novi-Bazar to the Black Sea, and from the south of the Balkans to the Aegean. It need hardly be added that they constitute the main mass of the Alps. The only country where the Silurian rocks have a large surface area is the Spanish peninsula, and there they are mainly confined to the western half. . They show a long line in the Ural range, stretch from Lake Ladoga along the south of the Gulf of Finland, rise above the Baltic in the islands of Dago, Ösel, Gottland, and Öland, and appear sporadically throughout Scandinavia. Their very name comes from the fact that they are present in England. The other Palaeozoic formations—Devonian, Carboniferous, and Permian—are widely developed. In Russia they stretch from the Baltic to the Oka, and from the White Sea to Voronezh; they occupy a considerable area to the west of the lower Don, and are laid bare in the valley of the Dniester. In Western Europe they are best represented in the countries on each side of the lower Rhine, in the British Islands, and in northern Spain; but they occur here and there hi several other quarters. The Secondary formations are still more extensively distributed,—the Triassic and Jurassic forming a large proportion of central Germany, a good part of France, much of England, and nearly the whole of the eastern portion of European Russia. To the Cretaceous rocks alone belong a large part of the Paris basin, part of the lower Rhine basin, all the Danish or Cimbric peninsula, the great range of the Carpathians, the Balkan range, nearly the whole of Greece, Albania, Montenegro, Dalmatia, Servia, and a wide tract in the centre of southern Russia. The Secondary are in their turn exceeded by the Tertiary formations, which furnish the continent with some of its most valuable agricultural areas. The Miocene alone occupies a considerable part of the Paris basin, part of the basins of the lower Rhine and the lower Weser, the Lombardy plain, the Hungarian plain, Galicia, and Bessarabia, not to mention the valley of the Ebro and other extensive tracts in Spain. The Pliocene is best represented in the Caspian basin and the Ponto-Caspian depression, and along the Russian coast from the Danube to the Don.

Europe is richly furnished with mineral wealth, and the distribution is not so irregular as might appear from the actual state of the mining industry in the different countries. For the precious metals it is mainly indebted to other quarters of the globe, but it possesses abundant stores of iron ores, lead, copper, coal, and salt. Britain, Germany, and the countries of the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy are especially distinguished by the value and variety of their deposits; and Belgium and Sweden are largely indebted for their national prosperity, the one to its coal and the other to its iron. Spain naturally ranks high in this department, but the working of its mines is in a backward condition. In the lands of the Turkish empire matters are still worse, and Greece has comparatively little to show except the silver mines of Laurion. Roumania exports salt and petroleum, and Servia, since it became independent, has begun again to work its iron and copper mines. In the Russian empire there are valuable coal-beds in the European territory, but the richest mineral area lies on the Asiatic side of the Urals.

Platinum has hitherto been obtained nowhere in Europe except in the auriferous sands in the Russian government of Perm, which yield from 900 to 1000 kilogrammes a year. Gold, on the other hand, is widely diffused, but it occurs for the most part in such insignificant quantity as not to repay the expense of collecting. The total production is about 6900 kilogrammes per annum, and by far the greater part is furnished by Russia. The gold mines of Spain were at one time famous, and there was a considerable population supported by gold-washing in Transylvania and Roumania. Silver is much more abundant than gold, but it is less extensively distributed. There are productive mines in the Erzgebirge, the Carpathians, the Urals, the Norwegian Dovre-Fjeld, and the Sierra Morena, as well as in Sardinia and England. The total yield is about 300,000 kilogrammes per annum. A considerable proportion is obtained during the working of the lead mines, which are of great importance in several countries, more especially in Spain, Germany, and Belgium, where the supply of lead exceeds the local demand. In Spain, which has a large export, the lead mines are mainly situated in Murcia, Almeria, and Jaen; in France the most important are in the Puy-de-Dôme; in Britain in Durham and Northumberland; in Austria in Carinthia, Bohemia, Tyrol, and Galicia; and in Hungary at Neusohl and NagybAnya. In the German empire, Prussia, Saxony, Brunswick, and Anhalt are most productive; and in Italy, Sardinia, Tuscany, and Lombardy. In Portugal there are 15 mines; and in Turkey lead ore exists at Gallipoli, and at Olovo in Bosnia. The total amount of copper obtained throughout the continent is estimated at about 589,000 cwt. yearly. The only countries that can afford to export are Spain, Sweden, and Norway; but Germany, Britain, Russia, Belgium, and Hungary are all great producers. In Britain the mines are mainly situated in Cornwall, Devon, and Chester; in Germany they are widely distributed, but the most productive are in the districts of Merseburg and Arnsberg in Prussia; in Hungary they chiefly occur in the Carpathian mountains. Of all the Spanish mines the best known are those of Rio Tinto and Tharsis in the province

Table showing Statistics of the Produce of several of the more important Metals. The years vary from 1871 to 1875, and in the case of Spain from 1869 to 1872. [table]

of Huelva (of which the latter is capable of yielding 500,000 tons of iron pyrites annually). More than a third of all the zinc obtained in Europe is contributed by Belgium, and nearly as much is furnished by Germany. The principal Belgian mines are in the province of Liège, and the principal German mines at Oppeln in Upper Silesia. Tin is found only in a few localities. The richest mines are those of Cornwall in England, which have been worked from the earliest historic period; and next in importance are the Austrian mines in the Erzgebirge. Mercury is practically peculiar to Spain and Hungary, though it is obtained in small quantities at Vallalta in the Italian province of Belluno, at Santa Fiora in the province of Grosseto, and in Germany at Deuxponts in the Palatinate, and is also known to exist in Bosnia and Roumania. The principal Austrian mines are at Idria in Carniola, and the principal Spanish mines at Almaden and Almadalejo in Ciudad Real.

The salt production of Europe amounts to about 95,000,000 or 100,000,000 cwt. per annum. To this total no contribution is made by Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Luxembourg, Belgium, Servia, or Montenegro. It is partly procured from mines, partly from springs, and partly from salt lakes and the ocean. The most productive mines are in the Carpathians (at Wieliczka and Bochnia in East Galicia), and at Salzburg on the north side of the Alps; there are also extensive deposits in Chester and Worcester in England, in the departments of Upper Saône and Ariége in France, at Wilhelmsglück and Friedrichshall iu Würtemberg, at Berchtesgaden in Bavaria, at Leopoldshall in Anhalt, at Stassfurt and Erfurt in Prussian Saxony, at Stettin in Hohenzollern, and at Sprunberg in Brandenburg, at Cardona, Pinoso, Gerry y Villanueva, in Spain, and in the districts of Prahova, Valbea, and Bacau in Roumania. Salt springs are still more widely distributed. Bay salt is largely manufactured in France, both on the Mediterranean and Atlantic seaboards; in Russia, along the coasts of the Black Sea; in Spain, at Cadiz and Torrevieja, etc.; in Italy, in Sardinia, Sicily, and Elba; in Turkey, at the mouth of the Danube, and in the island of Crete; and in Greece, in the island of Santa Maria. The salt lakes of Bessarabia alone yielded on an average 13,924,000 cwt. yearly from 1819 to 1850, and carriers come for supplies from Poland, Volhynia, Kieff, and Tchernigoff. About 230 waggons are loaded daily in the season.

Full details on the European coal-fields have already been given in the article Coal, vol. vi. p. 55-58; and the reader will find a similar account of the iron mines under Iron; Sulphur mining is one of the greatest industries of Italy and Sicily, forming, indeed, almost the exclusive means of support for Girgenti and some other towns; graphite is obtained in Bohemia and Moravia, Bavaria, England, Russia, Sweden, and Spain; alum more particularly from Scotland, Bohemia, Germany, Russia, and Spain; asphalte from Switzerland, Italy, Brunswick, Dalmatia, and Tyrol; and petroleum from the Carpathian mountains, Alsace, Lorraine, France, l fcc.

The four great determining facts in regard to the climate of Europe are these: its northern borders are within the Arctic circle; in the south its most southern points are 9 degrees of latitude from the tropic of Cancer; to the east extends for 5000 miles the continuous land surface of Asia; to the west lie the waters of the Atlantic. Of minor but by no means small importance are the presence of the Mediterranean along the south, and the peculiar character of the African continent. To the ameliorating influence of the ocean must be ascribed the main features that distinguish the climate from that of the corresponding portions of Asia, and assimilate it so largely to the insular type. Like other great masses of water, the Atlantic is less exposed to rapid thermometric oscillations than the surface of the land, and its contiguity tends to produce a similar stability. Slowly but continually it is surrendering the heat which it has gathered in the regions of the sun. Though no problem of physical geography is more keenly debated than the method by which the heat is conveyed and distributed, the fact is admitted on all hands that such conveyance and distribution does take place. Part of the work is done directly by means of currents, part indirectly by means of winds. The questions in dispute are mainly—what are the currents, how are they produced, and what is the area of their individual influence i While one physicist ascribes all the credit to the Gulf Stream, another argues that the Gulf Stream has spent both its impetus and its heat long before it approaches the European seas, and that its contributions, if there be any at all, are altogether infinitesimal. Be that as it may, the influence of the ocean as a whole is easily verified; a glance at a map with isothermal lines at once indicates its extent. The line, for instance, of 36° of mean annual temperature, which in the east of the continent passes near Orenburg, reaches as far north as 73° in the sea between Iceland and Norway. As the complement to this stands the fact that the temperature of the East Spitzbergen Sea is still so high that no true polar ice finds its way further south than 75° N. lat., while on the Americau coast it is carried down to 36° N. lat. In other words, if the European conditions were the same as the American, instead of the polar ice never being seen at the North Cape, it would come sailing down past the straits of Gibraltar.

As regards its rainfall Europe belongs iu the main to the zone which is characterized by irregularity of seasonal distribution; its southern portions to the sub tropical zone distinguished by the dryness of its summers. The line of demarcation runs at a little distance to the north of the Spanish coast of the Bay of Biscay, continues along the northern slope of the Pyrenees, turns north-eastλvards to the neighbourhood of Valence on the Rhone, curves southward to Genoa, follows the line of the Northern Apennines, strikes across the Adriatic from Rimini to the neighbourhood of Zara, and proceeds by way of Seraievo, Novi-Bazar, and Sofia to the coast of the Black Sea, south of Zozopoli. Within the sub-tropical zone the maximum rainfall occurs during winter in the south of Spain and Italy; during autumn and spring in central and northern Spain, the south of France, and northern and central Italy. In the zone of irregular distribution Scotland, Ireland, and western England have their maximum iu winter; western France, eastern England, the coast regions of the Low Countries and Denmark, and the greater proportion of Norway have theirs in the autumn; while iu eastern France, the German Empire, Austria, Hungary, Russia, and Sweden it falls in summer. The general conditions that determine the quantity of rain in a given district are well known,—the height and direction of the mountains, proximity to the coast, and so on. As most of our rain is brought by southwest and west winds, the western parts of the continent have on the whole a heavier rainfall than the eastern; though to the south of the Alps and the Pyrenees the relief of the peninsulas, and the presence of such a large secondary reservoir of evaporation as the Mediterranean, produce great irregularities. The following statistics show the influence of a western position: —

[table]

The greatest maxima of rainfall are registered at Stye-Pass in the west of England, 189*49 inches or 48Γ ’ 2 centimetres, and at Seathwaite, 152*14 inches or 386'7 centimetres. Next comes Glencroe in Argyllshire, with 128'60 inches or 326 ’ 4 centimetres. The Venetian and Lombard Alps furnish such maxima as Tolmezzo 95 - 9 inches or 243 - 6 centimetres, and Sta Maria 97*7 inches or 248 ’ 3 centimetres; and in general it may be said that the rainfall exceeds 40 inches or 100 centimetres along the whole line of the Alps from Chambery to the neighbourhood of Vienna in the east, and to the sea-coast in the south, down the central ridge of the Apennines to the latitude of Gaeta, along the line of the Balkans, in the Dalmatian, Monténégrine, and Albanian highlands, all round the north and west of Spain and Portugal from Cape Roca to the eastern end of the Pyrenees, in a large proportion of Ireland, Scotland, and Western England, and throughout nearly the whole of Norway. The plateaus are usually well watered, though their maxima are much below the maxima of the mountains; but the great Iberian plateaus are an exception to the rule. The rainfall of Salamanca is only 9 - 4 inches or 24Ό centimetres, and that of Albacete 10 - 3 inches or 26 , 3 centimetres—a fact which is to be ascribed partly to the exhaustion of the rain-clouds by the mountains of. Galicia and Portugal, and partly to the treeless condition of the table-land itself. The average throughout Sweden and the greater part of Russia, in the Hungarian plain, the northern half of Bohemia, and the district of Germany from Halle to Dantzic, ranges from 40 to 55 centimetres or 15 ’ 7 to 21 ∙6 inches. The lower part of the basin of the Dnieper, the whole of the basin of the Don, and the country watered by the middle division of the Volga receive no more than from 25 to 40 centimetres or 9 - 8 to 15*7 inches; while the great Aralo-Caspian depression, including about 100 miles of the Lower Volga, is an almost rainless region.

In western Europe by far the most prevalent wind is the S.W. or W.S.W. It represents 25 per cent, of the annual total; while the N. is only 6 per cent., the N.E. 8, the E. 9, the S. 13, the W. 17, and the N.W. 11. Of the summer total it represents 22 per cent., while the N. is 9, N.E. 8, E. 7, S.E. 7, W. 21, and N.W. 17. In southeastern Europe, on the other hand, the prevailing winds are from the N. and E.--the E. having the preponderance in winter and autumn, Of local winds the most remarkable are the Föhn, in the Alps, distinguished for its warmth and dryness; the Rothenthurm wind of Transylvania, which has similar characteristics; the boro of the Upper Adriatic, so noticeable for its violence; the mistral of southern France; the Etesian winds of the Mediterranean; and the sirocco, which proves so destructive to the southern vegetation. Though it js only at comparatively rare intervals that the winds attain the development of a hurricane, the destruction of life and property which they occasion, both by sea and land, is in the aggregate of no small moment. About six or seven storms from the west pass over the continent every winter, usually appearing later in the southern districts, such as Switzerland or the Adriatic, than in the northern districts, as Scotland and Denmark. As instances of the exceptional strength which is sometimes displayed, it may be mentioned that in April 1800 men and cattle were actually lifted from the ground by the force of the storm, and in November of the same year about 200,000 trees were blown down in the Harz mountains alone.

The snow-line is subject, as is well known, to great local variations. In the western and central Alps it lies about 8860 feet above the sea, and in the eastern Alps on an average about 330 feet higher. In exceptional instances, of course, the snow disappears at a much greater altitude, and even such summits as the Jungfrau (13,671 feet), the Strahlhorn (13,750), and the Chaberton are occasionally stripped completely bare. The whole range of the Pyrenees, where the line usually lies about 8950 feet on the north side and about 10,000 on the south, is sometimes in the same condition. In Norway, towards the North Cape, the snow-line is 2360 feet, in the island of Seiland about 3200, on Sulitjelma about 3970, on Dovre 5540, on Jotune 4910, on Sululand 5300, and at Folgefonden 4800,—a difference of from 400 to 1000 feet being observable between the eastern and western side of the peninsula, mainly due to the more abundant precipitation on the latter. On the western side of the Caucasus the mean elevation is 11,700 feet, on the eastern 14,100. There are no nevados in the Urals, though some of the summits exceed 5000 feet in altitude. The Alps and the Scandinavian mountains are the only ranges that possess a fully developed glacier system, but both the Pyrenees and the Caucasus have individual specimens of considerable extent. The most important of the Pyrenean group are the Maladetta, the Cabrioules, the Mont Perdu, the Brèche de Roland, the Vignemale, and the Néouville glaciers.

The principal botanical regions of Europe have already been indicated in the article Distribution. According to Schouw’s nomenclature, the Mediterranean countries belong to the region of Labiatae and Caryophyllaceae; the countries of northern Europe, about as far as the neighbourhood of the Arctic circle, to the region of Umbelliferae and Cruciferae; and the small remaining portion to the region of the Saxifrages and Mosses. The varying relief of the continent, and the consequent variety of climatic conditions, give rise to many infractions of this general rule,—the most remarkable being furnished by the Alps, which are high enough to have a large arctic area, and by the steppes of Russia, which, as is well known, also afford a peculiar environment. The Arctic region, whether in the Alps or elsewhere,, is distinguished by the shortness of its period of vegetation and the small number of its annual plants; the north-European region has a long period of vegetation and a regular winter rest; the Mediterranean region has a long period of vernal growth, a protracted summer siesta, a short period of autumnal growth, and a winter rest varying greatly according to locality; and the steppe region has a short period of exuberant vernal growth, limited on the one hand by a severe winter, and on the other by a parching summer. The nearest approach to tropical conditions is made by the south of Spain. In the Vega of Murcia there is no set time to sow and time to reap; every month brings its fruit, and spring and autumn keep pleasant fellowship throughout the year. The ground is no sooner cleared of its crop than it is again under the plough, and within a few weeks it is green with another blade.

No exact statement can be given in regard to the number of genera and species represented in the European floras. Several districts have only been partially explored by the botanist; he not unfrequently finds it difficult to decide whether a given plant has a right to be admitted into his lists; and he is naturally more interested in estimating the comparative richness of his scientific regions than of such conventional areas as the continents. Hinds, reckoning all known species of plants at 134,000, allows 11,200 to Europe; while Friedrich Nyman, in his Sylloge Floroe Europäer, 1854-1S55, gives 1115 genera and 9738 species according to Fries’s classification, and assigns 883 genera and 8104 species to the dicotyledons, 206 genera and 1544 species to the monocotyledons, and 26 genera and 90 species to the acotyledons. In all probability the numbers, especially of the species, are below the truth. The total number of so-called useful plants cultivated in European gardens is stated by Professor Göppert at from 2400 to 2500; but a large proportion of these are mere exotics. The extent, indeed, to which this is the case, even with many species of wide distribution, is one of the most striking facts in botanical geography. The vine, the olive, the fig tree, and the mulberry were not improbably brought from Syria or Asia Minor by the Greeks; the Arabians introduced the cotton plant; the walnut and the peach are originally from Persia, the apricot from Armenia, and the sugar-cane and the orange from China. The leek and the onion, the mustard plant and the cumin, the laurel and the myrtle, are all Asiatic. For the pomegranate we are probably indebted to the Phoenicians, and the quince still bears the name which it received from the town of Cydonia in Crete. The cypress is a native of the neighbourhood of Herat, the plane tree of the Taurus, the chestnut possibly of Armenia. Lucullus, the conqueror of Mithradates, brought the first cherry-tree to Europe; and some less famous Roman of the first century after Christ was the introducer of the pistachio. Maize, tobacco, and the potato are well known to be of American origin, and the same is the case with the agave and the opuntia, two of the most characteristic plants of the Mediterranean region. The scarlet oak was brought from North America to England in 1691; the cedar of Lebanon was first planted in British soil in 1683; and among recent additions are the Douglas pine from the Rocky Mountains, the deodara from the Himalayas, the Wellingtons, gigantea from California, and the Eucalyptus Globulus from Australia. The last is being planted in thousands in southern Europe, and has produced a greater sensation than perhaps any other botanical stranger. It would be easy to continue the list to an indefinite extent, and it would require to be supplemented by a list of floral additions that have taken place within historic time without the intentional intervention of man. This second cla33 is also a numerous and continually increasing one. In the neighbourhood of Port Juvenal, near Montpellier, 487 exotics from America, Asia, Australia, and New Zealand were collected by Godron, and of these 52 species were new to science. The Anacharis Alsinastrum or Elοdea canadensis, from Canada, now luxuriates in the rivers of England and Prussia, where it was quite unknown about 1850; and the Eriocaulon septangulare has found a new homo in the streams of Ireland. In the former instance the rapid diffusion is all the more remarkable as the plant is dioecious, and only one sex has reached Europe. It will be readily understood that if the introduction of new species into the continent is of frequent occurrence, the migration of indigenous species from district to district must be more frequent still. The plants of the higher regions are often carried down by the rivers, and effect a permanent settlement in the plains; and from time to time a foreign army leaves the seeds of a foreign flora on its camping-ground. Thus the Campanula pusilla, for example, has floated down from the Alps to Strasburg, and the Bunias orientalis has grown in the Bois de Boulogne since the Cossacks were there in 1815. There is a limit of course to such introductions and immigrations: of plants as of men it is equally true non omnes omnia possunt.

The most important economical position is held by the cereals. Wheat is most extensively cultivated in Russia, Austria, the Danubian principalities, France, England, and Germany. The parallel of 57° or 58° may be taken as its northern limit, though it is grown as far north as 65‘, and is found to ripen in the island of Dyro in 69° 5'. Spelt {Triticum Speltα) is mainly cultivated in south western Germany, Switzerland, and Belgium. Barley is cultivated in West Finmark as far as 70°, and is part of the usual crop in all countries of the continent. Oats are more frequent in the central and northern regions; their practical polar limit is 69° 28', though they have been known to ripen at Hammerfest in 70° 37'. Rye is an important crop in nearly all the great grain-growing countries, but it is especially in favour in the east and north; its northern limit is between 69° and 70°. Maize has been grown in 63° 15', reaches its practical limit in 59° 55', and is exten sively cultivated only in the southern parts of the continent. Sorgho {Sorghum saccharatum) from China and a few other foreign cereals have been successfully introduced, but are hardly anything more than agricultural curiosities. The next place belongs to the potato, which has spread over an enormous area in central and northern Europe. It has been grown as far north as the island of Magero in 71° 7' N. lat., or about four miles S.E. of the North Cape. The greatest producers are Germany, Belgium, Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, and Switzerland. A considerable variety of leguminous plants are grown in Europe either for their fruit or forage—beans, pease, lupines, clover, lucerne, sainfoin, <fcc. The common pea {Pisurn arvense) and the common bean ( Vicia Faba) have their northern limits respectively at 64’ 41' and 67° 17'. A species of lupine {Lupiηus liηifolius) furnishes a substitute for coffee both in Norway and Tyrol. The vine can be grown without protection in southern Scandinavia, and has been known to ripen its grapes in the open air at Christiansund in 63° 7'; but its cultivation is of no importance north of 47⅜ o on the Atlantic coast, 50^° on the Rhine, and from 50° to 52° in Russia. The following is the average wine-production of the several countries:—France, 42,000,000 hectolitres (or 924,000,000 gallons); Italy, 30,300,000; Austria-Hungary 23,000,000; Spain, 20,000,000; Germany, 4,440,500; Switzerland, 1,155,000; Greece, 1,150,000; Roumania, 1,000,000; Russia, 614,000. A speeial Greek variety of vine is the source of the currants of commerce; it is cultivated in the Peloponnesus, Cephalonia, Zante, Ithaca, and Santa Maura, and yields an anuual average export of 128,000,000 tt>. The olive, with its double crop, is one of the principal objects of cultivation in Italy, Spain, and Greece, and is not without its importance in Portugal, Turkey, and southern Austria. The average total of the oil harvest in these countries amounts to about 140,000,000 gallons; and of this Italy alone produces about 66,000,000.

Besides the turnips and other roots which furnish so much of the winter-fodder required by the northern farmer, the beet holds an important economic position in central Europe as a producer of sugar. Tobacco is extensively grown from Sicily to Sweden, but its cultivation is forbidden in England, Spain, and San Marino, and inΛustιia it is a state monopoly. Its northern limit is about 63° 26'. It receives special attention in Turkey, Greece, Russia, Germany, France, and Switzerland. Hemp and flax have a very wide distribution, the former furnishing a valuable export to Archangel in the north and to Italy in the south. Among all European countries Russia is the greatest producer: during their church fasts her vast population make an enormous consumption of hemp oil. Hopgrowing is hardly known in the south, but forms an important industry in England, Austria, Germany, and Belgium. The plant grows wild in Norway as far north as 64° 12'. Among the exotics exclusively cultivated in the south are the sugar-cane, the cotton-plant, and rice. The first, which is found in Spain and Sicily, is of little practical moment j the second holds a secondary position in Turkey and Greece; and the third is pretty extensively grown in special districts of Italy, more particularly in the valley of the Po. Of the vast number of fruit trees which flourish in different parts of the continent only a few can be mentioned. Their produce furnishes articles of export to Austria-Hungary, Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, and Spain. In Sardinia the acorn of the Quercus Ballota is still used as food, and in Italy, France, and Austria the chestnut is of very common consumption. In the Mediterranean region the prevailing forms—which the Germans conveniently sum together in the expression Südfrüchte, or southern fruits—are the orange, the citron, the almond, the pomegranate, the fig, and the carob-tree. The importance of these fruits to Italy and Spain is too well known to require more than passing mention. Sicily, which was one of the great granaries of the Roman empire, is now almost a continuous orchard. In recent years a new kind of pistachio—the cacahuètes, or mani—has been cultivated in Spain, and its fruit extensively exported. The palm trees have a very limited range: the date palm {Ph-cenix dactylifera) ripens only in southern Spain with careful culture; the dwarf palm (Chamoerops humilis) forms thickets along the Spanish coast and in Sicily, and appears less frequently in southern Italy and Greece.

Such are the main economic plants of Europe; but the list might be indefinitely extended if we were to include all the plants which enter into the flora cibaria of the various regions—from the caper-bush of the south to the Poly-yoηum viviparum and Oxyria reniformis consumed by the Laplanders in the north.

When the Aryan peoples began their immigration into Europe a large part of the surface must have been covered with primeval forest; for even after long centuries of human occupation the Roman conquerors found vast regions where the axe had made no lasting impression. The account given by Julius Caesar of the Sylva Hercynia is well known: it extended, he tells us, for sixty days’journey from Helvetia eastward, and it probably included what are now called the Schwarzwald, the Odenwald, the Spessart, the Rhön, the Thüringerwald, the Harz, the Fichtelgebirge, the Erzgebirge, and the Riesengebirge. Since then the progress of population has subjected many thousands of square miles to the plough, and in some parts of the continent it is only where the ground is too sterile or too steep that the trees have been allowed to retain possession. The consumption of timber has of necessity been enormous, more especially on account of the climatic condition of the continent and the maritime activity of a large part of its inhabitants. To the dweller in the warmer regions of the earth the chief value of a tree is not unfrequently its shade; by the European its worth is as often estimated by the quantity of heat it will yield on his hearth. Several countries, where the destruction has been most reckless, have been obliged to take systematic measures to control the exploitation and secure the replantation of exhausted areas. To this they have been constrained not only by lack of timber and fuel, but also by the prejudicial effects exerted on the climate and the irrigation of the country by the denudation of the high grounds. But even now, on the whole, Europe is well wooded, and two or three countries find an extensive source of wealth in the export of timber and other forest productions, such as turpentine, tar, charcoal, bark, bast, and potash.

According to the calculations of A. Bernhardt, the following table gives an approximate view of the forest areas in the several countries :— [table]

The average proportion for all Europe being rather more than 25 per cent., four countries rise considerably higher in the scale: viz., Norway G6, Russia 31, Austria-Hungary 29 ’ 5, and Sweden 29 ’ 02; and the others rank as follows :— Germany 25 7, Turkey 24(1), Spain 20’38, Switzerland 17’5, France 15 ’ 8, Italy 14'39, Greece 14, Belgium 10 ’ 6, Netherlands 7, Denmark 6, Portugal 5, and Great Britain 4. Other statisticians rate the proportion for the continent at nearly a third, and arrange the states in a somewhat different order.

The Scandinavian countries have a large timber trade.

In Sweden and Norway the most usual trees are couiferous; but in the former a certain number of birches, alders, and ash-trees are intermingled, and towards the south the oak and the beech occur. This last is the characteristic tree of Denmark; though some other species, which were common in the prehistoric period, are nut without importance, and coniferous trees have beeu again introduced. The Russian forest area is mainly in the northern part of the country, but it is separated from the Arctic coast by a wide treeless belt. Towards the south there are no great stretches of woodland, and for the most part the only trees are found along the banks of the rivers. The Mennonites on the Sea of Azυff have formed plantations, and there are others in the land of the Don Cossacks. The fir-tree is found as far south as 48° N. between Novomovskovsk and Pavlograd in the government of Kharkoff. The most widely distributed tree is the pine; and of the deciduous trees the most frequent are the birch, the aspen, and the oak. In the north of Russia alone the annual production of tar amounts to 297,000,000 tt>. In Austria-Hungary there is still abundance of wood, especially in the Alps and the Carpathians; but in some quarters, more particularly in Transylvania, the most reckless destruction is allowed to take place. The principal trees are the pine, the fir, the beech, the oak, the larch, and the hornbeam; next come the ash, the elm, the maple, aud the birch; and in the third place, the acacia, the poplar, and the Götterbaum. According to the Bulletin of the Geographical Society of Belgium, the value of the timber obtained on the lands of the Hungarian crown amounts annually to about £1,042,000. In Germany, the pine and fir are most frequent in the south, and the oak and birch in the west and south-west; while in the central district coniferous and deciduous trees are about equally common. In no part of Europe are the forests under more judicious management. France is most indebted to the oak, the birch, the chestnut, the fir, and the pine; but they fail to satisfy the home consumption. The poplar gives a peculiar character to its southern landscapes, and the chestnut furnishes a valuable addition to its alimentary resources. Italy has a rich variety of types—the silver fir (Abies pectinata) and other conifers, the Quercus sessiliflora, the cork-tree, and other oaks, the chestnut, the sycamore, the mountain ash, the evergreen oak. It exports manna, which is obtained from the ash tree, galls, and turpentine. Switzerland not only supplies a great internal demand for timber, but is able to contribute to foreign markets. The common trees are for the most part the same as in Austria-Hungary. In Spain and Portugal the first rank as an economic factor belongs to the cork tree, which yields in the former country about £3,820,000 worth of bark for export, and gives employment to thousands of the population. The oak, the red birch, the chestnut, the cypress, the plane, and several conifers are also of importance. In Portugal the largest individual forest—the royal domain of Leiria— consists mainly of the Bordeaux pine.

According to the system proposed by Dr Sclater, and adopted by Mr Wallace, the most recent English writer ou the distribution of animals, Europe belongs to the great l’alaearctic Region, which also includes the most part of the continent of Asia and a broad belt along the north of Africa. The northern and central portions of Europe constitute a special sub-region, distinguished as the “European” par excellence; and the southern portions in conjunction with the African belt constitute the Mediterranean sub-region. The line of demarcation between these two is almost the same as that which separates the zone of subtropical rains from the zone of rain at all seasons of the year, the only important difference being that, while the Italian Alps and the Lombard plain belong meteorologically to the north, they are zoologically assigned to the south. According to Air Wallace, the “European” subregion contains two distinctive genera of mammals, the Mygale or musk rat and the Tlupicαpra or chamois, and its characteristic forms are the mole, the hedgehog, the shrew, the badger, the bear, the wolf and the fox, the weasel, the otter, the hare and the rabbit, and the dormouse. In the Mediterranean sub-region a similar position is held by the Dama or fallow deer, the civet, the hyena, and the porcupine. In former geological periods not only were the Quadrumana represented in Europe by several species, but one of those, the Dryopithecus, discovered in the Miocene formations, probably approached nearer to man than any of the existing anthropoids. At present the only species of the order in the continent is the Macacus iηuus, a little monkey about a foot and a half long, which disports itself about the rock of Gibraltar, but strangely enough has Asiatic rather than African affinities. The cosmopolitan Cheiroptera or bats are well represented,—no fewer than thirty species of the family Vespertilionidae alone being described. Perhaps the most common species throughout central Europe is the Vespertilio pipistrellus or ordinary British bat, but several others, as the Vespertilio discolor and the Vespertilio limnophilus, have a wide range. Of the genus Sorex among the Insectivora there are at least ten species, the Sοrex tetragonurus or common shrew inhabiting nearly every country in the continent. An Italian species. Sorex etruscus or Crocidura etrusca, is remarkable as the smallest of all known quadrupeds. Besides the Mygale muscovitica, already mentioned as peculiar to the European sub-region, there is another species, the Mygale pyreηaica. The common hedgehog (Erinaceus europoeus) is universally distributed; and a smaller species, E. auritus, is found in the province of Astrakhan. The ordinary English mole, Talpa europcpa, is unkuown in Ireland, and in southern Italy gives place to the Talpa ca ι ca. There are comparatively few of the larger members of the Carnivora, and their domain is continually being diminished. The brown bear, or Ursus arctus, is still found in the Pyrenees, here aud there in the Alps, in the Carpathians, and the Scandinavian mountains; and his polar cousin, the Ursus maritimus, is met with along the arctic coasts. To the general distribution of the badger there appears to be no exception. The glutton is for the most part confined to the forest regions of the countries that border the Arctic Ocean. The genus Mustela is represented, not only by the polecat and the weasel, but by the martin, the pine-martin, and the ermine, all of which are pretty familiar in most of the sub-region, though it is only in the colder countries that their value as fur-bearers is developed. The Mustela boccamela or honey-weasel appears to be confined to Sardinia; and it is questionable if the ferret, Mustela furo, introduced by man from Africa, exists in the wild condition. An important place in the fauna of Europe is still held by the wolf and the fox, the former being from its numbers the most formidable of man’s feral antagonists. It will be a long time ere the more mountainous countries of the Continent can boast, like Britain and Ireland, that their last wolf is killed, and the “tabunchiks” or horse-herds of Russia will probably for many generations have to renew their annual battles with the famished packs. It is indeed asserted that since the abolition of serfdom the number of wolves has considerably increased, since the peasants are no longer obliged, as they formerly were by their landlords, to organize regular hunting expeditions. Besides the common or grey wolf, Carns lupus, of universal distribution, there is a black species, Canis lycaon, of less frequent occurrence. The jackal, Canis aureus, is found in southern Russia, Greece, and Turkey. There are at least four species of fox :—the Canis vulpes, well-known in western, central, and northern Europe; the Canis melanogaster, orblack-bellied fox,familiar in Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia; the Canis lagopus, arctic or blue fox, whose most popular name indicates its localities; and the Canis corsac, whose large packs make incursions from Tartary as far west as the Volga. The civet is found in France and Spain. Of the five or six species which represent the cat tribe, or genus Felis, even the most widely diffused, the Felis lynx or common lynx, is growing scarce in all except the more mountainous regions; and the Felis borealis or northern lynx is familiar only in Norway and Sweden. In spite of the keen pursuit to which they are subjected the seals may still be seen, though in much diminished numbers, on the shores of all European seas, including the Baltic and the Caspian. The Caspian species belongs to the same genus (fjallocephalus of Dr Gray) with those of the Arctic Ocean, which probably indicates that the connexion between these two habitats was more recent than the connexion between the Caspian and the Mediterranean, It is doubtful whether we should include the walrus in the list of European fauna, though it is common about Spitzbergen, and occasionally appears pretty far south. The next animal which presents itself in the ordinary system of classification is one of the most interesting, on account of its rapid disappearance before the march of civilization. The natural limits of the beaver were between 33° and 67° N. lat., and within that area it was formerly present in great numbers. On the coasts of the Black Sea, where it was abundant in the beginning of the Christian era, it is no longer to be found, and it is about 500 years since it disappeared from England. Its present habitats are mainly in Poland, Russia, Sweden, Finland, and Lapland; though it still built its dams in the Moldau, the Neubach, the Landsee, the Danube, and the Salzach in Austria, at least as late as 1866. It has left its mark on our geographical nomenclature in such names as Biberach, Bibersburg, and Beverley. The genus Λmcofα, or water-vole, is represented by about ten or eleven species, some of which are very widely distributed, while others are limited to very small areas— ∖ Aυq Arvicola nivalis to the Alpine region, tiwArvicola destructor to Italy. No small notoriety belongs to the members of the genus Lemmus on account of their strange migrations and the destructive effects of their visits. There are three or four species, the best known of which is the Lemmus norwegicus, or Norwegian lemming. Equally notorious for their destructive capabilities, and much more general in their distribution, are the rats and mice, which constitute the next natural order. The most prevalent species, the Mus decumanus, or common brown rat, was first observed in Europe in 1727, but since then has taken possession of country after country and expelled several weaker congeners. Nine species are described, including the well-known house mouse, or Mus musculus, and a special Iceland variety. The common hamsters, distinguished by their provident preparation for the winter, are found in Poland, Silesia, Belgium, and Alsace; and two cognate species occur in southern Russia. The same region presents three species of Dipus, or jerboas. The next genus is almost peculiar to the “European” sub-region: Spalax typhlus, perhaps the only species, being confined to southern Russia, Hungary, Moldavia, Greece, and western Asia. The bobak (Arctomys bobak) inhabits Bukovina and the southern parts of Poland and Russia; the marmot, A rctomys marmotta, is restricted to the snowy regions of the Alps; and the Arctomys citillus is found in Austria, Bohemia, Poland, and. South Russia. One species of squirrel, the Sciurus vulgaris, is familiar in all the wooded districts of Europe; and another, Sciurus alpinus, belongs to the Alps and the Pyrenees. The flying squirrel, Plerοmys sibericus, ‘\& found in the forests of Lithuania, Lapland, and Finland. A considerable range is assigned to the dormouse, or Myoxus, in its three species— Myoxus glis, Myoxus nitela, and Myoxus avellanarνus, of which the last is the most common. On the other hand, the porcupine, or Hystrix, is limited to Greece, Italy, and Spain. Hares and rabbits, which form the genus Lepus, have a very wide range, and present but little variety. The distribution of species, however, is peculiar,—the common rabbit, for example, being abundant in England, France, and Spain, but absent from Silesia, Galicia, and Russia, and a large part of Italy. The Ruminantia have suffered even more than the larger Carnivora from the encroachments of man; the aurochs, lfBos umιs) which at one time had a wide range, is now confined to Lithuania; the Dos scoticus exists in a half-tame condition in a few parks in England and Scotland; the ibex or steinbock is growing scarce in the Alps and Carpathians; and the musmon or wild sheep is only to be met with in Sardinia and Corsica, part of Spain, and some of the Greek islands. The chamois, however, is still fairly common in the Alps of Switzerland, France, and Germany, in the Apennines and the Carpathians, and also in Greece. The only proper antelope, Antilope saiga, occurs but rarely in the country to the north of the Black Sea. Fallow deer are found wild in Spain and Sardinia, but elsewhere are protected by man. The elk is still to be met with in Lithuania, Russia, and Scandinavia; the red deer in Scotland, Scandinavia, Germany, and Spain; and the roebuck (Cervus capreolus') in the Scottish Highlands, the Apennines, the Carpathians, and the Sierra de Sogura. Of the great Pachydermatous order, which has left such abundant remains of its hippopotami, elephants, and woolly rhinoceroses in our Pleistocene formations, the only representative in a feral condition is the wild bear, or Sus scrofa, which is found in various regions from Spain to the Caucasus, but does not venture north of the Baltic. The larger Cetacea are growing scarce in the European seas; but the common whale, Baloena rnysticetus, still comes as far south as the Mediterranean; and the spermaceti and the rorqual are captured in the northern regions. The dolphins, grampuses, and porpoises are pretty commonly represented throughout the various seas, now by one species now by another.

How rich the avifauna of the European continent really is may be judged by consulting such noble monographs as those of Gould, Sharpe and Dresser, or Bree; but it must be borne in mind that it is a variable quantity, and that no monographs can long represent the exact state of the case. The extinction or introduction of mammalian species is easily observed; but the continual movements of the feathered tribes are less easily ascertained. This has been clearly shown by C. A. Westerland in his account of the geographical distribution of the birds in Sweden and Norway. He gives a great many data which prove that southern species not unfrequently move northwards, and that there is a regular tendency of Asiatic and European birds to migrate to the west; while on the other hand it is well known that western winds bring American strangers to our shores. The Muscicapa albicollis has been denizened in Gothland for no more than thirty years; and the Alauda cristata, first observed in 1833, now regularly breeds in Scania. Emberiza rustica, indigenous to Asia and northeastern Europe, appeared at Haparanda in 1851, and now spends its summers in Lapland. Similar facts might be quoted for country after country and district after district. The jackdaw began to build in Murcia in Spain about 1850, and it is now one of the commonest species; in Thuringia the magpie, once abundant, is growing rapidly scarce. Altogether, according to Degland and Gerbe’s classification, there are 247 genera and 531 species more or less belonging to the continent; but of these hardly one or two are peculiarly its own. As characteristic of his northern sub-region, Mr Wallace names the thrushes, warblers, rudlings, tits, pipits, wagtails, buntings, housesparrows, linnets; and of the Mediterranean sub-region, the Luscineola, the Pyrophthalma (Curruca melanocephala of Degland), and the Bradyptelus or bouscarle (Cettia of Degland) among the Sylviidae; Telephonus among the shrikes; Halcyon and Ceryle among the king-fishers; the quail-like Turηix among the Galliuae; and Gyps, Vultur, and Neophron among the vultures. The bearded vulture, or liimmer-geier (Gypaetos barbatus), is the largest of European birds; it is found in gradually diminishing numbers in the French and Swiss Alps, the Ligurian mountains, the Caucasus, and perhaps the Pyrenees. Vultιιr monachus or arrianus is common in Sardinia, the Pyrenees, and Bessarabia; Neophron percnopterus in France, Switzerland, Spain, Greece, and southern Russia. The golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetus), which is the largest in Europe, builds equally among the rocks of the Alps, the Pyrenees, and the Grampians, and on the treeless steppes of Russia. Next in size comeβ the imperial eagle, which belongs to the south of the continent; and then follows a list of lesser eagles, hawks, buzzards, kites, &c., to the number of forty species more or less, the genus Falco alone being represented by eleven. The owl family, Strigidae, counts ten species, noblest of which is Bubo maximus, the eagle-owl, or grand due of the French, almost rivalling the golden eagle in size; it is found not only in the French mountains, but in Switzerland, Italy, Sicily, Bessarabia, and the Crimea. The passerine order is represented by a great variety of genera and speeies, many of which have a wide range, and are known by the most familiar names in all the countries of the continent. In direct economic importance the first place is held by the gallinaceous order, the Grallatores, and the Palmipedes, which furnish all the species that are distinguished as game, and a great many others that are largely used as food. A few of the smaller birds are thus appropriated in special districts: the lark, for example, is caught in great numbers in the neighbourhood of Halle and Leipsic, and the blackbird shares a similar fate in Corsica.

From its mountain-lakes to the surrounding ocean the waters of Europe are for the most part well stocked with fish. No complete summation has been made of the number of genera and species represented; but it is suggestive of no small variety to learn that thirty-five species have been found in the lakes of Tyrol alone, lying between 2000 and 8000 feet above the level of the sea. A considerable proportion of the genera are cosmopolitan, and a still greater number range over wide areas outside of Europe. As peculiar to his “European” sub-region, Mr Wallace mentions two genera of the perch family—the Λs∕)ro, and the Percarina of the Dniester. Among characteristic forms are the stickleback (G asterosteus), found as far south as Italy; the pike (Esox), which ranges from Lapland to Turkey; the Silurus οi the Swiss lakes and German rivers; and several members of the carp family or Cyprinidae, including the carp proper (Cyprinus), the roach, tench, bream, bleak, <kc. Of much more practical importance are the Salmonidae, among which the salmon holds the first place. This noble fish is found in all the rivers of the Atlantic versant as far south as the Loire, and especially in Scotland, Norway, and Iceland it proves an abundant source of wealth. In southern Russia, where the riverfisheries attain a development unknown in any other part of Europe, its place is supplied by the sturgeon, the sterlet, and the sevruga, and economically at least by several species belonging to the perch family, which hold an important position in virtue of their abundance. The greatest sea fisheries of Europe are those of the German Ocean, from which England, Scotland, Norway, Holland, and France have long reaped magnificent harvests, and in which Germany has more recently begun to share. The value of the sea fish exported from Britain, Norway, and Holland is about £4,000,000 per annum. It is needless to mention the names of the principal species—herring, cod, <fcc.; and the conger-eels of the Channel islands, the pilchards of the Cornish coast, and the sardines of France are almost as familiarly known. In the Baltic there is great abundance of various smaller kinds of fish—more particularly the sprat, the sardine, and several members of the perch family; and some of the Salmonidae are of considerable economic importance. No less than 300,000 tons of sardines have been caught in a single year at the mouth of the Dwina, and the Esthonians may almost be said to subsist on a fish which they name the “kilka.” In the Mediterranean the tunny, the sardine, and the anchovy give existence to the most extensive fisheries,—the first passing in enormous shoals from the straits of Gibraltar eastward to the Black Sea, and skirting in its passage the coasts of Sardinia, Naples, and Sicily. The people of Comacchio on the Adriatic, to the number of 5000, are supported by the capture of the mullet, the eel, and the “acquadella,” which enter their lagoons from the sea by a canal, and are prevented from returning by an ingenious system of sluices and water-gates. Among the minor animals of the European seas there are none except the oyster that have the commercial importance of the trepang of the Eastern archipelago; but several species of shellfish, urchins, and crustaceans are extensively consumed. Oyster-beds are found on most of the Atlantic coasts, and the artificial culture of the species has recently received a great development, especially in France and England: the produce of Cancale and Granville in the bay of St Michel, of Essex and Kent, of Ostend in Belgium, and Bohuslän in Sweden are in high repute. The sponge and the coral fisheries of the Mediterranean are both vigorously pursued, the former with most success in the Aegean, and the latter on the coasts of Sardinia, Corsica, and Andalusia.

Though the reptiles as a class are represented by about forty genera, the species are for the most part inconspicuous, and in no instance formidable. The three land tortoises are all confined to the south, and one of them has its only European habitat on the Caspian. There are as many fresh-water tortoises, but only one, Emys lutaria, reaches as far north as Prussia. The turtle is principally caught in the Mediterranean; the chameleon is peculiar to Spain; the gecko and the Hemidactylus vermiculatus are confined to the southern regions; and the Phyllodactylus européens has only been discovered in Sardinia. Stellio vulgaris, very common in Greece, is the only member of the large family of the Iguanidae that exists in Europe. On the other hand, there is a great variety of lizards (Lacertidae and Chalcidae), and several are of wide distribution. The Gongylus ocellatus, or spotted skink, is found on the shores of the Mediterranean. Anguis fragilis, or the slow-worm is fanιiliar in all except the colder regions of the continent. No fewer than eighteen species of the genus Coluber are described,—the largest being the Coluber dαphis, which not unfrequently exceeds 5 feet in length, and the most widely distributed the Coluber natrix, or ringed snake, which does not exceed 4 feet The Coluber evsculapιi gives its name to the German watering-place of Schlangenbad, or Snakes’ Bath. The Viperidae are much less prolific of species; but the Pelias bems, or common adder, Î3 well-known in the most part of central Europe. Of the frogs and toads there are eight genera: the genus Pana is repre-seated by the common, and the escuιeπt frog, the latter of which is absent only from the British' Islands; the genus Alytes by A. obstetricans, which sets the example of the curious human custom of the couvade; and the genus Hyla by H. viridis, or the common tree-frog, whose stentorian croak may ba heard in every country of the continent. The salamanders and newts are represented by five genera: the genus Triton contains seven species, of which Triton cristatus is most commonly distributed. They would bring the list of European reptiles to a close if it were not for the presence in the caves of Carinthia and Carniola of the famous Proteus anguinus, or olm of the Germans, whose history is one of the most curious of those elucidated by modern naturalists.

Insects do not play so conspicuous and ostentatious a part in Europe as in some of the warmer regions of the globe; it is only in special localities or exceptional seasons that their destructive or irritating influence becomes formidable to man. There are not many towns like Fasano, where the· inhabitants have in summer to leave their usual residences to the occupancy of flies; and if the European horticulturist has a hard battle to fight with caterpillars, earwigs, and wasps, he generally succeeds in gaining a fair crop after all. The mosquito and the tarantula are the most venomous of those which attack the human species. The locust, which spreads such alarm in Africa and Asia, appears in western Europe only at intervals and in demoralized detachments; though in the south of France it is found worth while to offer a reward for the collection of the insects and their eggs. In Turkey, the Danubian principalities, and southern Russia it sometimes commits tremendous ravages; and all efforts of the agricultural population are futile to check the. advance of the countless swarms. The year 1860 was unhappily distinguished by the severity of the attack. But if insects play an inconspicuous, they by no means play a small part in the European regions. In the northern sub-region, among the characteristic Lepidoptera, are Parnassius, Apoma, Leucophasia, Colias, Argynnis, Vanessa; and of the Coleoptera, Carabidae, Staphylinidoe, aud Curcidionidae are especially abundant. The Mediterranean sub-region has two peculiar genera of butterflies— Thais and Doritis, and Anthocharis and Zegis are characteristic; of the Coleoptera, Carabidae, Copridae, Buprestidae, Canthamdae, and Curculionidae are abundant. The three insects of greatest economic importance are the silk-moth, the bee, and the cantharis. The silk-worm, since its introduction in the 6th century, has become an important object of cultivation in Italy, Turkey, Greece, Francs, Spain, and Portugal, and has even proved remunerative in Prussia, Bavaria, aud central Russia; and recently a new species from Japan, which feeds on the oak and not on the mulberry, has been successfully reared in the Baltic provinces. Bee-keeping is an extensive industry in Italy, France, Switzerland, Russia, and Sweden; and in Greece the tax on bees furnishes <£1600 to the revenue. The cantharis is a native, not only of Spain, as its popular name of Spanish fly imports, but also of France, Germany, Italy, Hungary, and South Russia, and even occurs in the south of England. After the declaration of Mexican independence in 1820 the cultivation of the cochineal insect was introduced into the Spanish province of Granada with such success that no less than 801,915 tt> of raw cochineal was exported to England in 1850. The present generation has seen two very unwelcome additions to the number of European insects the 1 hylloxera vastatrix and Doryphorus decemlineata or Colorado beetle, of which the former has com pletely ruined a large proportion of the French vineyards and the latter has threatened to play similar havoc with the potato crop.

The horse holds the first place among the domestic animals of Europe, and in no other region has it developed a greater variety of type. Whether the present species is of European origin has not been quite decided; but remains of a similar form occur in the Pliocene and Pleistocene strata, and it is evident that the prehistoric peoples set the example of that hippophagy which scarcity of animal food has again introduced into Europe. Now at least there are no wild horses on the continent, though they are mentioned as late as the 8th century in a letter of Pope Gregory to Boniface. Horse-breeding is a highly important industry in almost all countries, and in several, as Russia, France, Hungary, and Spain, the state gives it exceptional support. Those which have the greatest export trade are Russia, Denmark, Austria-Hungary, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium. The Hungarians are a specially horse-loving people, counting in 1871 no fewer than 141 horses to the thousand inhabitants, instead of 67 as in Austria. Almost every district of the continent has a breed of its own: Russia reckons those of the Bashkirs, the Calmucks, the Don-Cossacks, the Esthonians, and the Finlanders as among its best; France sets store by those of Flanders, Picardy, Normandy, Limousin, and Auvergne; Germany by those of Hanover, Oldenburg, and Mecklenburg, which indeed rank among the most powerful in the world; and Great Britain by those of Suffolk and Clydesdale. The English racers are famous throughout the world, and Iceland and the Shetland Islands are well known for their hardy breed of diminutive ponies. The ass and the mule are most abundant in the southern parts of the continent, more especially in Spain and Italy. In the one country they number about 2,320,000, and in the other about 1,000,000. The camel is not popularly considered a European animal; but it is reared in Russia in the provinces of Orenburg, Astrakhan, and Taurid, in Turkey on the Lower Danube, and in Spain at Madrid and Cadiz; and it has even been introduced into Tuscany. One of the strangest sights of southern Russia to a traveller from the west is the huge ungainly creature yoked to what is practically a toy cart. A much more important beast of burden in eastern and southern Europe is the ox: the long lines of slow-moving wains in Roumania, for example, are not unlike what one would expect in Cape Colony. In western Europe it is mainly used for the plough or fattened for its flesh. The Netherlands, Denmark, Servia, Roumania, Turkey, Russia, Italy, Sweden, Spain, and Germany are all exporters of cattle; and all the other countries are more or less engaged in cattle-breeding for their own demands. It is estimated that there are about 100 distinct local varieties or breeds in Europe, and within the last hundred years an enormous advance has been made in the development and specialization of the finer types. The cows of Switzerland and of Guernsey may be taken as the two extremes in point of size, and the “Durhams” and “Devonsliires” of England as examples of the results of human supervision and control. The Dutch breed ranks very high in the production of milk 4 . The buffalo is frequent in the south of Europe, more especially in Transylvania and Italy; in the former country the number is about 58,000, and in the latter about 40,000. Great attention is given to dairy-farming in Great Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Austria, and part of Italy. Switzerland, the Netherlands, Austria, Denmark, Ireland, and Finland are exporters of cheese or butter, or both; Italy, though famous for the so-called Parmesan cheese, requires a large import, and the abundance of olive oil discourages the manufacture of butter. Sheep are of immense economic value to most European countries, and form an important article of export for the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Russia, Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Servia, Roumania, and Sweden. The local varieties are eveu more numerous than in the case of the horned cattle, and the development of remarkable breeds quite as wonderful. In all the more mountainous countries the goat is abundant, especially in Spain, Italy, and Germany. The swine is distributed throughout the whole continent, but in no district does it take so high a placeas in Servia, where there are no fewer than 1062 to 1000 inhabitants, a proportion which more than doubles the next highest, which is afforded by Luxembourg. Spain ranks third in the list, and has a large export of hams and sausages. In the rearing and management of poultry France is the first country in Europe, and has consequently a large surplus of both fowls and eggs. The latter produce is also exported by Austria and Spain. In Pυm-merania, Brandenburg, West Prussia, Mecklenburg, and Würtemberg, the breeding of geese has become a great source of wealth, and the town of Strasburg is famous all the world over for its pates des foies gras.

The following tables show the distribution of the more important domestic animals in the principal countries of Europe:— [table] [table]

Ethnology is still in its infancy, painfully learning its first principles, and gradually discovering true methods of verifying its data and generalizing their teachings. There is such a thing as race; but we cannot be said to have attained to any single test or any combination of tests which does not leave our classifications more or less uncertain. We can ascertain whether the majority of a given people have dark hair or light, whether they are dolichocephalic, mesocephalic, or brachycephalic, or exhibit several varieties of skull; but it has still to be proved how far such characteristics are permanent, and as permanent available for our purpose. Europe in .every square mile of its surface gives the lie to the supposition that consanguinity is implied by community of speech: Celts are equally eloquent in English and French; Slavonians equally enthusiastic for the dignity of Deutschland or the glory of Greece. There are, perhaps, only two peoples in Europe of whom we can be said to have anything like ethnological statistics, the Jews and the Gipsies; and in both cases it is due to the fact that they have so long been treated as social or religious pariahs. It is easy to ascertain how many men in Europe use French as their mother-tongue; but we have no meaus, apart from historic evidence, which applies only to individual instances, of knowing whether three generations back any man’s progenitor was a Corsican, a German, or a Breton. And if there is one fact to which every new investigation gives additional emphasis it is this, that there is no nationality, and no individual component of a nationality, which can establish the purity of its blood. What to the superficial observer are the most homogeneous peoples turn out on closer examination to be only conglomerates in which the elements are better assimilated. In Wurtemberg, for example, as is shown by H. v. Holder, the so-called German population is composed of Romans, Vindelicians, Rhaetians, Avars, Hungarians, Slaves, Swiss, Swedes and others introduced during the Thirty A ears’ War, Waldensians, Tyrolese, and Jews. Still it is true (to borrow another analogy from geology), that.if all are more or less obviously conglomerates, the materials have probably been derived for the most part from strata of the same formation. If the Frenchman is partly German, partly Celtic, German and Celt do not differ from each other more than limestone, marble, and chalk.

From recent researches it is now familiarly known that Europe had its human inhabitants in the Pleistocene period. They are distinguished by the name of the Palaeolithic or Old Stone people, in contrast to a later population still in the same stage of civilization. Their remains have been discovered in England, Belgium, France, Germany, and Switzerland; and some investigators are disposed to recognize two varieties, distinguished as the men of the caves and the men of the river-beds. Having possibly entered Europe before the first glacial period, they were certainly there at the final transition to the present conditions of climate. They lived by hunting and fishing, and in general characteristics appear to have been similar to the Eskimo, with whom some are disposed to identify them. If this identification be a mistake (and at best it is very problematical), they have left no distinct representatives behind them. What progress they had made in the arts, necessitated by their mode of life, may be in some measure estimated by the remarkable relics of their implements and weapons still recognizable; but there are no sufficient data to decide whether they were in astate of advance or decline; the difference of finish in different specimens of the same handiwork may be due to different degrees of care or skill possessed by contemporaneous workmen. As far as can be judged, the continent of Europe again ceased for a time to be a human habitation; and when light breaks in once more it is found in possession apparently of two races both in the Stone stage of civilization, and known by the common name of the Neolithic or New Stone peoples. In the meantime the fauna of Europe had changed and become in the main what it still is. The chief point of interest attaching to these Neolithians is how far the brachycephalic, and presumably the older, variety is still traceable in our modern population.

There are several peoples, most of them of small numerical importance, which are undoubtedly aliens from the commonwealth of the Aryan race now dominant throughout the greater part of the continent,—the Turks, the Magyars, the Finns, Esthonians, and Lapps, the Votiaks, and the Basques; and we know that in the Roman period of the historic epoch the Iberians, the Ligurians, and possibly the Etruscans and the Rhaetians, occupied a similar position. The Turks and the Magyars are at once put out of the question by the fact that there is documentary evidence of their arrival in Europe long after the Christian era; and the dubiety which attaches to the affinity of the Etruscans and the Rhaetians renders their classification impracticable. The Votiaks may be left out of account, from their almost Asiatic localization; so that there only remain four actual and two historical peoples to be considered. Three of the four—the Finns, Esthonians, and the Lapps —may be bracketed together as Ugrians or Uralians^ or under any other convenient name (though the Lapps may possibly be more distinct than this would make them), so that practically we have two actual and two historical. Arranged geographically, the Ugrians constitute a northeastern or Baltic group; and the Basques, the Iberians, and the Ligurians a southern or Mediterranean group. Of the Ligurians little further is certainly known than that in historic times they occupied the north-western slopes of the Apennines, or the modern Piedmont, and extended west to the mouth of the Rhone; but probable traces of their presence have been collected as far south as the mouth of the Tiber and as far north as the Loire or Liger. Of their language we are absolutely ignorant, and their classification is almost purely hypothetical. They evidently lost ground at a very early period from the encroachments of various peoples, and among others from the inroads of the Iberians, whom we have now to consider. This people is specially connected with the Spanish peninsula, which derived from them the popular name of Iberia; but they appear also to have occupied Sardinia, Corsica, and Sicily, may possibly, as some maintain, have been one of the primitive elements of the population of Italy, and, according to a hint of Tacitus, probably extended as far north as Brittany. At the time of the Roman conquest of Spain they were already largely mingled with Celtic blood, a fact which was indicated by the name of Celtiberians. There is no reason to suppose that they have died out or been exterminated, and consequently it is presumably possible to discover them more or less distinctly among the mingled population of modern Spain. Here the Basques at once present themselves, a peculiar people speaking a peculiar language, and occupying the very part of the country where from analogy we might expect to find the remains of an ancient race. In what respect do the Basques agree with our knowledge about the Iberians? The Iberians, as has just been stated, were no longer homogeneous at the time of the Roman conquest; and the Basques, according to cranial data, exhibit an interfusion of blood: “they possess a moderate brachycephalism and a strongly marked dolichocephaliam.” The Iberians, however, were clearly distinguishable from the Celts; and the same is true of the Basques. The Iberians are described as of short stature, slight build, and dark complexion; and a similar account may be given of the Basques. The identification of the two peoples is consequently accepted by a large number of anthropologists; but the unanimity is hardly so great in regard to their further identification with the Ugrians of the north-east. In favour of the generalization, there is a certain similarity of physical type, and the probability, as it appears to a large school of investigators, that the Finns and Esthonians are, like the Basques, the remains of a population which formerly extended to the south and west over a much wider area; against the generalization is the fact that no closer connexion lies between the Basque language and the Finnish than that they both belong to the agglutinative family, and it is quite as probable that the Ugrians have come in from the north and east at a com paratively modern period. If we adopt the bolder hypothesis in its full extent, and it is adopted by many investigators, the continent of Europe was originally inhabited by a small, swarthy, brachycephalic race, who were formerly represented in historic times by Iberians, Ligurians, and other less known peoples, and in modern times are still partially represented by the Basques, the Esthonians, and the Finns, who have retained their nonAryan speech, and by smaller groups in England, Brittany, Prussia, and Spain, who have adopted the alien languages spoken in their vicinity. By some a still further identification is ventured with the Berbers of North Africa; and a few, as Hyde Clarke and Homalius d’Hulloy, maintain that the so-called Aryan immigration was only in a comparatively small degree an introduction of a new race, and ought rather to be viewed as the diffusion of a civilization. Whatever dispute, however, such ethnological innovators may raise, there can be no question as to the almost universal predominance of the Aryan influences in the historic times; and though anything like chronology is for the most part out of the question, the general features of the great movement to which these influences are due can be stated with considerable certainty. Four great Aryan detachments are easily distinguished, and may for convenience be designated by the very imperfect and somewhat misleading names of the Graeco-Latin or Southern, the Celtic or Central, the Teutonic or Northern, and the Slavonic or North-Eastern. Whether the Southern or the Celtic was the first of the two to enter Europe is altogether unknown: one offshoot from a common stock may easily maintain a nomadic or semi-nomadic state for a longer time than another and a later offshoot. The southern detachment was probably a succession of detachments,—the first represented, it may be, by the old progenitors of the Albanians and the so-called Pelasgic tribes, the second by the various tribes who settled in Italy, and the third by the Hellenic or Greek tribes. The Greeks at least appear to have entered Europe by way of Asia Minor and the Archipelago, and the Italian tribes may have followed a similar route. A more northern line of march, or nomadic progress, was chosen by the Celts, of whose passage up the valley of the Danube we have a trace in the Bυii, the Celtic people who have given their name to the now Germanized kingdom of Bavaria. If the opinion of Virchow, based on the presumed incorporation of ancient historical materials in the Ora Maritima of Avienus, be correct, they reached southern Gaul and Spain about the 6th century b.c. The Teutons or Germans began to be known to the Romans shortly before the Christian era, and in the 4th century a.d. pushed westward within the boundaries of the empire. The Slavonians have never advanced much beyond the Elbe in the north, but towards the south they extended in the course of the 9th and 1 Oth centuries into Austria on the one hand and Greece on the other. Of the Semitic peoples, the Jews, which are now the most important, have entered in successive detach ments, more in the fashion of ordinary immigrants; the Arabs, who contributed largely to the progress of European civilization, but have left little trace of their blood except in southern Spain, crossed into that country in 710. The settlement of the Hungarians dates from the 10th century, and that of the Ottoman Turks, the last great addition to the ethnological conglomerate of Europe, dates no further back than the 14th.

The following table, founded (as all such estimates are) mainly on linguistic and political data, is given by Dr Brachelli as an approximate survey of the numerical importance of the various peoples of Europe. A strictly ethnographical classification will probably be always impossible, and certainly cannot be attained in the present state of scientific statistics. In many cases the possible error in the summation is very considerable: the Jews, for example, here given at 3,000,000, are reckoned at 5,226,858 in an interesting article in the Journal of the Society of Biblical Archaeology, 1876,—2,647,036 of them being assigned to Russia. [table] [table]

Although language is no test of race, it is the best evidence for present or past community of social or political life; and nothing is better fitted to give a true impression of the position and relative importance of the peoples of Europe than a survey of their linguistic differences and affinities. The following table contains the names of the various languages which are still spoken on the Continent, as well as of those which, though now extinct, can be clearly traced in other forms. Two asterisks are employed to mark those which are emphatically dead languages, while one indicates those which have a kind of artificial life in ecclesiastical or literary usage. [table]

[table]

From this conspectus it appears that there are still about 60 distinct languages spoken in Europe, without including Latin, Greek, Old Slavonic, and Hebrew, which are still used in literature or ecclesiastical liturgies. β Besides, as we shall presently see, all those which are spoken over extensive territories, and some even which are confined within very narrow limits, are broken up into several distinct dialects. Most of the number, however, are destined to disappear within a comparatively short period, before the encroachments of the few which are especially favoured by political circumstances and literary culture. The process is rapidly going on, and everything tends to its acceleration. Some, indeed, whose doom appeared almost sealed in the end of last century, have gathered fresh life and repulsed the intrusive language by which their existence was threatened; and on others a temporary and melancholy restoration has been inflicted by the mistaken enthusiasm of a patriotic minority. English, French, German, Russian, Italian, and Spanish will probably for a long time share the real dominion of Europe; Dutch and the Scandinavian tongues will maintain their ground, but they hardly give promise of expansion: Bohemian, Hungarian, and the South-Slavonic have made good their position; and Neo Hellenic, under favouring circumstances, may get possession of the territory of its nobler ancestor.

Greek and Latin may fairly claim the first place in a historic sketch, on account of the immense and varied influence they have exerted, directly or indirectly, on the popular and literary language t>f all the prominent peoples of Europe. The former, which is preserved in what is at once the most perfect and the most multiform of the older literatures of the world, was spoken wherever a Greek city wβs established in Asia, Europe, or Africa. It had several well-marked phonetic dialects:—the Aeolic, represented in Europe by the Boeotian variety; the Doric, employed in Sparta and most of the other Peloponnesian states, as well as in other colonies of Sicily and Southern Italy; and the Ionic, which in the Attic dialect attained its noblest development, and became the principal literary form. A nιde dialect of the Aeolian type was spoken in Thessaly; and in several districts of northern Greece other varieties must have had their home, some of them probably so divergent from the more cultured dialects as to be unrecognizable by the rough and ready philology of the ancient Greeks. After the extension of the political power of the Hellenic race by the Hellenized Macedonians the Attic dialect became in a necessarily modified guise the language of at least the educated classes over a wide foreign area. Tins κaιrη διaKeκτos, or common dialect as it was called, was that in which all the Christian Scriptures were, if not originally penned, at least most potently disseminated; and some time after the establishment of the seat of the empire at Constantinople it was adopted as the official language of Eastern Europe, and developed or degenerated into what is distinguished as Byzantine Greek. Amid all the linguistic confusion of mediaeval and modern times in the Balkan peninsula th · old Hellenic speech maintained a precarious and degraded life in the so-called Romaic of the Greek people, still recognizable to the philologist, but to the vulgar ear and eye very successfully disguised. It is still spoken, not only in the modern kingdom of Greece, but in Thessaly and other part’s of Turkey along the coasts of the Aegean and the Sea of Marmora, and in the Greek settlements of southern Russia. Since the declaration of national independence an attempt has been made to go back to something liker the language of Xenophon; but as yet the Neo-Hellenic is almost purely a literary form, unintelligible to the great bulk of the people in the country. At best it is only a compromise between ancient Greek and Romaic, neither conforming to the classical standard of the one nor systematically accepting the grammatical changes developed in the other. As education advances,—and it is advancing rapidly under the control of the central administration,—it will probably take root among the people, and under the vivifying influences of national life grow up into a national speech. The ancient common dialect is still used in the liturgical services of the Oriental Church. The alphabet has been employed by several communities in the Turkish empire for their Turkish dialects,—among others by the people of Mariupol.

Latin was only one of a number of closely related languages domiciled in the peninsula of the Apennines, and by several of these it was affected much in the same way in which English is affected by German or French. Most of the number have left neither literature nor history behind them, but they must still be differentiating factors in the dialects of modern Italy. Oscan, which was spoken in a large part of the country south of Rome, and Umbrian, which takes its name from a district to the north, are both known to us from inscriptions,—the latter by the remarkable liturgical series called the Eugubine Tables. The Latin language kept pace with the extension of the Roman empire till it came into contact with the higher culture of Greece and the East; as an aggressive language it has no historic parallel, forthough the area of English has advanced as rapidly in modern times, this advance has mainly found place where English-speaking people have outnumbered the foreign elements in the population. It continued to be the language of nearly all European literature for centuries after it had ceased to be a spoken speech; and it was the language of all learned literature well on in the 17th century. It is still used in the liturgy-of the Roman Catholic Church, and still forms the most potent lin guistic element in all European education. Its alphabet is more widely employed than any other in Europe, and is at the present moment gaining ground against the “Gothic” characters of modern Germany, as it <lid in early ages against the Saxon characters in England.

Gf the languages which have sprung from Latin, French resembles it most in its fortunes, though not in its forms. It is the official, literary, and educational language of the country whose name it bears, and is daily becoming more and more the popular language as well. Based as it is on the old langue d ’ oil of the north, it has gained the superiority over the dialects of Burgundy, Picardy, and Normandy, and the more cultured Provençal of the south, has already reduced them to the rank of mere patois, and is gradually diminishing even their local importance. On the north-west it is more slowly displacing the Breton, and in the south making inroads on the Basque. It was nearly naturalized among a large part of the inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine, and is still spoken by upwards of 200,000 of the new citizens of the German empire. In Switzerland it is the mother tongue of about 600,000 people, being dominant in Neufchatel, Geneva, and Vaud, and sharing the ground with German in Freiburg, Valais, and Bern. In Belgium it is the principal speech of the educated classes. No European language has had such an extensive foreign history within the continent. Not only was the closely related Norman French introduced into England in the 11th century, with such striking effect on the English vocabulary, but at several subsequent periods literary French has been potently at work. In the decadent period of German literature it largely supplemented the German language among the upper classes, and for a time furnished a large proportion of his vocabulary to the nominal writer of German. In Russia there was a similar French period about the beginning of the 18th century, which has left its influence to this day on the official publications of the Government. And in spite of the growing claims of German and English, French is still acquired by a greater number of foreigners t⅛an any other modern tongue.

The language usually known as Italian is not so much the national language of Italy as the language of a special district. The other dialects have not sunk to the level of patois; and at the present moment it is a matter of keen debate what is to be considered the true standard for the people at large. From Venice to Palermo there is a rich variety of forms which lιave received more or less of literary culture; and the pretensions of Florence to be the sole and final arbitress are far from being, unanimously admitted. Whatever position be assigned to Tuscan as the language of education, it will be a long time before it attain the predominance in Italy which French possesses in France. The dialects are usually divided into three main groups :—those of Upper Italy, including Genoese, Piedmontese, Venetian, Aemilian, and Lombard; those of Central Italy, including Tuscan, Roman, and Corsican; those of Southern Italy, including Neapolitan, Calabrian, Sicilian, and Sardinian. From Italian the other peoples of Europe have borrowed many terms for artistic technicalities, but comparatively little which belongs to everyday life.

Literary Spanish or Castilian is in much the same position as literary Italian, with this difference, that its literary precedence is more definitely established. A large area is still occupied by Catalonian or Catalan, both in Catalonia proper, in Valencia, and in Majorca; and the speech of the Galicians is much more akin to Portuguese. In Catalouia rich and poor, citizens and peasants, speak the provincial language; in Valencia and Majorca only the cultivated classes employ Castilian. On the whole, however, the Castilian territory is on the increase, and it is making its most rapid acquisitions from the Galician and Basque. Spanish is naturally distinguished from the other Neo-Latin languages by the greater number of words which it has borrowed from Arabic.

Portuguese is really what the name implies, and has to contend against uo alien idioms. In comparison with Spanish it has diverged further from the Latin type. It has been equally indebted to Arabic, and has also a considerable French element.

Walloon, the language spoken by the Latinized people of the Low Countries, is now a mere patois. Ladin is spoken by about 580,000 persons who occupy several considerable areas in the Alpine region, from the valley of the Rhine in the west to the neighbourhood of Aquileia on the Adriatic in the east. Roumanian is not only the national language of the country of that name, but is used by a considerable population in Servia, Hungary, Transylvania, Bukovina, Bessarabia, Roumelia, Thessaly, and Albania. In Roumania it is the object of increasing literary culture; and in spite of the foreign influences to which it has been so long exposed, it d z es not present much variety of dialect in the other districts.

Of the Teutonic languages the Gothic furnishes the oldest literary monument—the translation of the Scriptures by Ulphilas or Wulfila, who flourished in the latter part of the 4th century; but it is totally extinct, and among the living representatives of the branch the first place is due to what is popularly known as German par excellence,— that is, the modern literary or cultured form of High German. This is usually dated from Luther’s translation of the Bible, which marks the transition from the “Middle” to the “New” period. It is not only the recognized speech of the various states of t⅛e German empire, but cither in its cultured shape or in tributary dialects it is spoken by about 9,000, OOOfpeople in Austria-Hungary, and by nearly 2,000,000 in Switzerland. It has lost ground through the revival of Bohemian and Hungarian, but has gained on all the minor linguistic enclaves. Along the frontier regions of Russia and Poland it is partially retreating, partially advancing: Russia naturally discourages the German element in the Baltic provinces, and Germany as naturally the Polish element in Prussia. In both districts, German is the language of higher education. Whatever repressive measures Russia may adopt, it can plead, not only the example of Germany, but the fact that it is only attempting to recover ground that has been lost by the Slavonic tongues. Slavonic names of places occur as far west as Hanover, though the Germans frequently disguise or destroy them. Where it meets the Italian frontier the Teutonic language is retrogressive. Botzen in the end of last century was a border town of the German area; it is now thoroughly Italianized; and even Meran, several miles up the valley of the Adige, and 60 miles from the political frontier, is rapidly losing its Teutonic character. That the movement has been in this direction for centuries is clear; but it is doubtful whether the present German enclaves of the Sette Communi and Tredici Communi were always insular, or arc to be taken as proof that the Teutonic frontier formerly extended as far south as the neighbourhood of Verona and Vicenza.

The territorial relations of the Scandinavian languages arc sufficiently indicated by their names. They are nowhere aggressive, except where they come into contact with Finnish and Lapp. All of them, even the Faroes«, have a certain amount of literature; but three only, Danish, Swedish, and Icelandic, are vigorously cultivated. Norway is mainly in<lebted for its books to Sweden and Denmark, and its language is slowly passing into a patois. Danish has undergone the greatest changes from the old Norse type, and naturally from its position has been most affected by foreign influences.

Of the Low German group the Old Saxon, formerly spoken between the Rhine and the Elbe, has left several remarkable literary monuments; and two or three of its dialects, now bracketed together as Anglo-Saxon, furnished the basis of the present English language, which, however, by its mere vocabulary has nearly as much right t<> be considered a member of the Latin or Italic branch. The only-modern representative of the group besides English which ranks as a literary language is Dutch, which is spoken in Holland, and, under a slightly modified form known as Flemish, in a large part of Belgium. Along the coast and islands of the North Sea the current dialects, varying from district to district in an almost exceptional manner, are remnants of the old Frisian tongue, whose oldest written documents date from the 13th century; and the popular language of the countries between the Rhine and Weser and the Weser and Elbe, where it is not Dutch or Frisian, is Platt-Deutsch, which, while overshadowed by the High German, has recently attained a certain literary position through the writings of Fritz Reuter.

The Celtic languages are all without exception decadent,—the most tenacious of life being the Welsh and the Breton. The people who still retain them as their mother tongues are becoming more and more accustomed to the simultaneous use of the dominant languages around. The Welshman and the Scottish Highlander learn English, the Breton French. Cornish died out last century, and left only a few fragmentary texts; Irish is rapidly following it, but will be preserved in a considerable literature; Welsh alone has a fairly vigorous literature at the present time.

According to Professor Zerfli, there are no less than seventeen Slavonic dialects. The most important is Russian, or Great Russian, the national speech of the empire whose name it bears. At present it is spoken by about 34,390,000 of the 65,705,000 of the total population; and its area is rapidly being extended by the direct agency of the Government. In 1871 it was made the official language of Poland, and rendered obligatory in all the law courts of the country; and in 1876 it became practically the only permissible form in Little Russia, where all popular literature and public notices in the local language were prohibited. While it retains a rich inflexional system, Russian has enriched its vocabulary by a large foreign element, from French, English, and German; and its scientific terms are for'the most part those of Western Europe. As a written language it is deeply indebted to the Church Slavonie. Closely cognate is the Little Russian, or Ruthenian, already mentioned, which ’Τι spoken by about 14,201,280 people in Russia and upwards of 3,000,000 in Austria. Its Russian area includes Volhynia, Podolia, Kieff, Kherson, Ekaterinoslaff, Kbarkoff, Poltava, Tchernigoff, Minsk, Grodno, and Lublin, as well as portions of Astrakhan, the Don Cossack Country, Saratoff, and Voronezh; in Austria it is mainly confined to Galicia. Possessing as it does a rich store of popular tales and songs, and employed by several writers of great ability during the present century 7 , it ranks much higher than the third Russian dialect—the White Russian—which is the current speech of about 3,592,000 people, for the most part in Gro<lno, Minsk, Mohileff, Vilna, and Vitebsk, and is mainly distinguished by Lithuanian and Polish elements. 'Γhe second place in the Slavonic group may be assigned to Polish, which in spite of political disastersis still spoken by a large but scattered population. It is estimated that there are 3,905,871 Poles in Russian Poland, 2,450,000 in Prussia, 2,465,000 in Austria-Hungary, and 861,000 in European Russia. An extensive and vigorous literature will preserve the language even if it pass, as seems not improbable, altogether from the lips of men. Czech, or Tsekh, is the national language of Bohemia, and is also largely spoken in Moravia and north-western Hungary, where it is usually known by the names of Moravian and Slovak. The differences between the dialects of the several countries are on the whole comparatively slight; but as between Bohemian proper and Slovak, they are sufficiently marked to lead some philologists to recognize the Slovak as a separate language. There is a rich Bohemian literature which, dating from the 10th century, has after a long period of depression and threatened extinction received a new development in modern times. Bulgarian is distributed throughout European Turkey far beyond the district that bears the name of Bulgaria, and it also appears in eastern Roumania an∣l south-western Russia. A very small proportion of the people by whom it is used are of Slavonic blood; and it has departed more than any other Slavonic language from the common type. Its literature is almost exclusively modem, and would be of little moment were it not for its possible value to a possible nation. A much higher Îiosition has been attained by the Servo-Croatian, which is spoken >y about 5,500,000 people, inServia, Bosnia, Montenegro, southern Hungary, Slavonia, Croatia, Istria, and Dalmatia. Its dialects though numerous are so slightly differentiated that with any one of them a traveller can make himself understood by those accustomed to any other. It is usual to diride them into three groups—a western or Istrian, a southern or Dalmatian, and an eastern or Servian. Even if the political unification of the South Slavonians should never be realized, the future of the Servo-Croatian is secured by the vigorous literary development which is encouraged both at Agram and Belgrade. Unfortunately it is written and printed in two alphabets —the Cyrillian being employed by the Servians and the Latin by the Croatians. The remaining Slavonic tongues are of little practical importance except to the philologist. The Wends are being rapidly Germanized, andere now estimated at about 137,000, principally situated within an area of rudely elliptica_ form with, its two foci represented by Bautzen and Kottbus Since 1849 their numbers have diminished by upwards of 4200. Γhe language shows two distinct varieties.. . ι ' . .. . .. 11

The Lettie branch though decadent is interesting as linguistically the oldest of the Aryan languages in Europe. The Lithuanians were in the Middle Ages one of the most powerful peoples ot the Baltic re<rion, but fell into a secondary place by the incorporation of their country with Poland in 1386. Their language is still retained by about 150,000 or 200,000 people in Germany, and by about 1,434,750 in Russia, where those of the western part of the government of Kovno and the northern part of the government of Suwalki are known as Shomudes or Samogitians. Two dialects are recognized—the High or Southern, and the Low or Northern. The°Letts still number more than 1,000,000, situated in Courland, Livonia, and Vitebsk. Old Prussian, extinct two hundred years ago, was very similar to Lithuanian. With regard to the two languages marked in the table as “unattached,” almost nothing is known of Old Dacian, and the history of Albanian is but partially elucidated. The Skipitars, Amauts, or Albanians are one of the most remarkable peoples of south-eastern Europe. They not only occupy Albania proper, but also appear in considerable numbers throughout the rest of European Turkey and Greece, —forming, it is calculated, a total of 1,500,000. The colonies which settled in Italy and Sicily, though amounting to nearly 90,000, have given up their native language. Hahn, who was the first to make a thorough investigation of the subject, distinguishes two dialects —theToskan andthe Gegian,—-which are as distinct as High German and Platt-Deutsch. Besides the Greek alphabet another of dubious origin is also employed.

The Semitic languages are mere exotics in modern Europe. Hebrew, the most widely distributed, is little more than the ecclesiastical language of the Jews, who for the most part employ the common language of the country in which they reside not only in public intercourse but also in privatq. At the same time it is regularly taught in their schools, furnishes them with a number of familiar every-day expressions, and is not only the language of the professional literature of theologians, but appears in frequent quotations in their popular periodicals. Arabic, at one time the dominant language not only of southern Spain but of Sicily and part of Italy, is nowhere the usual speech of any European community; but it is familiar to the educated classes of Turkey. Maltese can still be recognized as of Arabic derivation, but has incorporated a vast mass of foreign words. Mosarabic has been extinct at least since the 18th century: the liturgical service in the cathedral of Toledo, which still bears the name, is performed in Latin.

The most important of the Finno-Tataric languages are the Turkish, the Hungarian, and the Finnish. The first varies greatly in its vocabulary in different places and grades of society; and the official form is largely composed of Arabic words. As a popular speech in Europe it has a very limited and discontinuous area. Hungarian, on the other hand, has maintained or recovered a remarkable degree of homogeneousnese, and occupies on the whole a very compact territory in spite of the intrusion of German; while its literature ranks as one of the most vigorous of the secondary literatures of Europe. Finnish proper is spoken by 1,710,274 people in the Russian empire (of whom 1,615,613 are in the duchy of Finland), and by 14,930 in Sweden and 7637 in Norway; while the closely cognate Karelian numbers 303,277 in Russia. The Tchudes, Vepses, and Votes, who amount to 48,000 in all, live in the governments ofθlonetz, Vologda, Novgorod, and St Petersburg, in the neighbourhood of Lakes Ladoga and Onega. Their languages or dialects are very similar to Esthonian, which, with the exception of Hungarian, ranks as the most literary member of the group, and is spoken by upwards of 749,000 people. Livonian lingers as the speech of a few thousand seafaring folk in Courland. The Lapps contribute 17,178 to the population of Norway, 6700 to that of Sweden, and 7497 to that of Russia. Their language is divided into four dialects. The Tcherernisses, Mordwines, and Votiaks are grouped together as Finns of the Volga,—the first, to the number of about 260,000, situated in the country between the rivers Viatka and Vetluga; the second being scattered, to the number of about 792,000, through the governments of Samara, Saratoff, Simbirsk, Pensa, Nizhni-Novgorod, Tamboff, Kazan, Ufa, Orenburg, and Astrakhan; andthe third, about 240,500 strong, occupying the western half of the government of Viatka. Another group is composed of the Permians, Siryenians, and Voguls. The two former were at one time one people, and had considerable fame in the Middle Ages for their commercial activity; they are now mere hunters, fishers, and pedlars, and number respectively about 67,000 and 85,400 people in Perm, Vologda, and Archangel. The Voguls are a little colony from Asia, 2000 strong, in the government of Perm. The total number of Tatars in Russia is said to be 1,212,610. They are found in all the sixty-one governments, with the exception of nine; but are most numerous in Kazan, Simbirsk, Ufa, and Viatka. They are closely connected with the Bashkirs of Ufa, Orenburg, Perm, and Viatka, who altogether amount to 757,000. The Nogaians, who live in the neighbourhood of the Sea of Azoff, are a mixed people, containing remnants of the Khazars, Petchenegs, and Cumanians; the Tchuvashes are a Tatarized branch of the Finns of the Volga; and the Meshtcheryaks of Ufa, Orenburg, Pensa, and Kazan are also of Finnish descent. The first still number 15,000, though a large number emigrated to Turkey after the Crimean war, the second 569,000, the third 136,000. The language of the Nogaians is the same with that of the Tatars proper, and that of the Tchuvashes seems to lie midway between Nogairic and Turkish. The Kirghiz, of whom there are 156,000 in Astrakhan and Orenburg, speak a dialect which is equally difficult of comprehension to the Tatar of Kazan and the Bashkir; and the Calmucks—107,000 in Astrakhan—are still more widely separated by language from their nearest kin.

Basque, which is spoken in the Pyrenean districts of France and Spain, is an agglutinative language, but cannot be classified. It is dying out more rapidly in the Spanish than in the French territory.

In 1877, as appears by the table on page 703, the European territory was distributed among 18 distinct political totalities (exclusive of the petty states of San Marino, Andorra, Monaco, and Luxembourg), viz.—the German empire, the Russian empire, the Ottoman empire, the united monarchy of Austria-Hungary, the united kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the republic of France, the kingdoms of Italy, Spain, and Portugal, the kingdoms of Belgium and of the Netherlands, the kingdom of Denmark, the united monarchy of Norway and Sweden, the kingdom of Greece, the republican confederation of Switzerland, and the principalities of Montenegro, Servia, and Roumania. Several of these consist of a greater or smaller number of partially independent states connected with each other according to very different degrees of political copartnery. The German empire, as one of the most recent as well as most extensive, naturally presents an unusual number of anomalies. Founded April 16, 1871, it comprises no fewer than twenty-six states under the presidency of the kingdom of Prussia, and these states are very dissimilar in size, constitution, rank, and general importance. Four, including Prussia, are kingdoms, six are grand-duchies, five are duchies, seven are principalities, and three are free cities. The organization by which they are united consists mainly of a federal council or Bundesrath, in which the individual states are represented by the nominees of their several governments, and a Reichstag, or Imperial Diet, the members of which are elected by universal suffrage. All military power is centralized in the hands of the emperor: his consent is necessary for all important appointments in the different divisions of the army, and he can command the erection of fortresses on the soil of any of the states, and if occasion requires can declare any part in a condition of siege. The practical dominancy of Prussia is further secured by the fact that it possesses 236 of the 397 members who compose the Imperial Diet. As separate states, Prussia, Würtemberg, Saxony, and Bavaria are all constitutional monarchies, each with its parliament or Landstag, consisting of an upper and a lower house. The various grand-duchies, duchies, and principalities have their several Stande, or states, some consisting of two chambers and some of one, and presenting considerable variety in the amount of representation accorded to different elements of the community, in the rules of election, and in the length of period for which it is valid. That unusual combination of geographical names, Austria Hungary, and its equally unusual adjective Austrian-Hungarian, which are so uncouth and bewildering to the ordinary reader, are an attempt to indi-

[table]

cate the relation of complete political equality established between the two great sections of what is popularly known as the Austrian empire. Each has its own parliament,—in Austria called the Reichsrath or Imperial Council, and in Hungary the Reichstag or Imperial Diet; each its own ministers, budget, and other administrative machinery; and the transactions between the two countries not unfrequently show like the transactions between two independent powers. The same person is monarch over both, and the united army is under his command, but there practically the unification ceases. Russia is an hereditary monarchy, nominally governed by the absolute will of the emperor or czar, but really by this in combination with a system of four great councils. Finland still retains its separate parliament, instituted in 1772, and supplemented by an imperial senate under the presidency of a governor-general. Switzerland is a confederation of twenty two states, with a republican government. The supreme legislative power is in the hands of the federal assembly, which is composed of a national council or Nationalrath, and a council of states or Stande-vath,— the members of the former being chosen by the people of Switzerland in general, and the members of the latter by the people of the individual cantons. The executive power is entrusted to a federal council, and the highest judicial authority to a federal tribunal, consisting respectively of seven and eleven members, nominated for three and six years by the federal assembly. Sweden and Norway are two kingdoms under one king, with separate government, constitution, and laws. In Sweden the legislative power is mainly in the hands of the diet, which consists of two elective chambers, while the executive is in the hands of the king and a council of state. The constitution of Norway is rather more democratic: the full legislative power belongs to the Storthing, and the king has no right of veto if the same bill passes three times. The common affairs of the two countries are decided in a council of state consisting of representatives of each.

Such are the most abnormal political arrangements in Europe. Britain, Belgium, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Roumania, Servia, are hereditary monarchies, with a parliament of two chambers and a responsible ministry. Greece differs in as far as it has only one chamber. Montenegro is an hereditary monarchy, with a senate; Monaco an hereditary principality, with a council of state; and Andorra and San Marino are both republics, with a general council.

It may be safely affirmed that the population of Europe has been steadily increasing since the time of the great Revolution, though it is impossible to ascertain exactly the average rate. The number in 1787 is said to have been 144,000,000; at the peace of 1815, 180,000,000; in 1833, according to Balbi, 227,000,000; in 1854, 258,778,850; and in 1874, according to Behm and Wagner, 309,178,300. If the earlier estimates, which are little better than guesses, even approximate to the truth, wo would have in 59 years an average annual increase of 1,850,000. In England and Prussia rather more than one per cent, of increase takes place every year, while in France during the greater part of the century the gain has been considerably less, and in exceptional years there has even been a decrease. If then we adopt one per cent, as the mean for Europe, the 180,000,000 people in Europe ought, in 1874, to be represented by 323,769,000. Two causes have greatly diminished the growth—war and emigration. In the Crimean war the direct loss was 386,000 soldiers; that of the French army in Italy was 10,173; and that of the German army in 1866 between 10,000 and 11,000. In the war of 1871-72 the victors lost 45,000 and the conquered a still greater number. The total loss since 1855 cannot be less than a million at the very least. Of the extent to which emigration from Europe has gone on during the present century every one has some idea; the immense territory occupied by people of European descent speaks for itself. Since 1820, Germany has contributed about two million inhabitants to the United States alone; since 1815, Great Britain and Ireland have seen no less tlιau from eight to nine millions of their populations leave their shores for ever. The drain on other countries, however, has been much less,—France, for ex ample, counting her loss by emigration in the ten years from 1849 to 1858 as 200,000, and Austria her loss from 1850 to 1868 at no more than 58,000.

The general rule that, other conditions being equal, the population decreases with the elevation of the country, holds especially true of Europe. None of its larger cities lie far above the sea-level. The highest point of permanent human occupation is the hospice of St Bernard—at an altitude of 2472 metres, or 8108 feet; and the highest village, St Veron la Ville, in the neighbourhood of Briançon, has an altitude of 2009 metres, or 6589 feet. There is a little hamlet'of German immigrants called Juf, 108 feet higher, in the Swiss valley of the Avers, a tributary of the Rhine. Chaux de Fonds, a town of nearly 20,000 inhabitants in the Jura, stands at an altitude of 1000 metres, or 3280 feet, and the average elevation of the Engadine, with its numerous villages, is about 6000 feet. The highest inhabited spot in the Dovre-Fjeld is said to be Hjerkin, at 3152 feet above the sea; in the Grampians C'orrour (Inverness-shire) at 1738, in the Harz the Brockenhaus at 3739, and in the Pyrenees Mont Louis at 5208.

The districts of densest population, or nearly 400 to the square mile, are the lower valley of the Thames, the neighbourhood of Newcastle, and the area which includes Liverpool, Birmingham, Sheffield, and Leeds, in England, the district between Boulogne and Liège, the neighbourhood of Cologne and Elberfeld-Barmen, the valley of the Rhine for some distance above the junction of the Maine, part of the valley of the Neckar, the country to the south of Leipsic, the vicinity of Prague, a large portion of the valley of the Po, especially round about Milan, the neighbourhood of Naples, and a little district round about Oporto. Most of these districts of densest population are surrounded by areas in which the ratio varies from 280 to 380 inhabitants per square mile. In France the only districts approaching the higher figure are the vicinity of Paris and of Lyons; and in Spain the only spot reaching the lower is San Sebastian. Pound about Barcelona and on the coast between Cartagena and the mouth of the Jucar there are from 190 to 240 per square mile. In no part of the Russian territory does the ratio rise higher than 140, and most of it varies from 25 to 95. The same low figures are applicable to the whole Scandinavian peninsula, with the exception of the most southern part of Sweden, which, with eastern Denmark, attains a ratio of 150 per square mile. In a large part of Norway indeed, as well as in both the north and the south-east of Russia, the ratio is not more than from 3 to 5. The only other portions of the globe which reach the highest European density are the valley of the Ganges, part of the Chinese empire, and possibly some parts of central Africa.

The numerical relation between the sexes is different in different countries as well as in the differently constituted portions of the same national community. The most prominent causes that interfere with the equilibrium are the greater destruction of men in time of war, and the greater removal of men by emigration. The following table gives the relations in the principal countries :—

[table]

Portugal and Greece represent the two extremes—the former having far above the normal number of females, or 1088 to every 1000 males, and the latter far above the normal of males, or nearly 1072 to every 1000 females. The following table gives the order of the various countries :— [table]

For Russia proper the census of 1858 gave 33,655,824 males to 35,275,904 females, or 1000 to 1048.

During the present century the industrial development of the more advanced countries has led to a remarkable aggregation of the people into cities, and facilities of travel have in many cases caused a large part of the city population to take up their residence in suburbs more or less separate from the central nucleus. In the following list of the towns and cities in Europe with more than 100.000 inhabitants it is noticeable that no fewer than twenty-one belong to Britain, and that nine of these are among the thirty, most of which are or have been political capitals, whose inhabitante exceed 200,000. [table] [table]

There are nine with 90,000 or upwards—Leghorn, the Hague, Malaga, Stuttgart, Frankfort-on-the-Maine, Jassy in Roumania, Sarra* ton, La Valette in Malta, and Saloniki or Thessalonica; sixteen have more than 80,000—Oporto, Dantzic, Aberdeen, Murcia, Lemberg, Le Havre, Nottingham, Strasburg, Preston, Catania, Nuremberg, Bremen, Bolton, Gratz, Norwich, and Christiania; eighteen lie between 80,000 and 70,000—Wilna, KiefΓ, Kazan, Cork, Blackburn, Stettin, Roubaix, Barmen, Aix-la-Chapelle, Altona, Briinn, Ferrara, Rheims, Cadiz, Elberfeld, Trieste, Huddersfield, and Szegedin; twenty-one are upwards of 60,000—Düsseldorf, Toulon, Plymouth, Wolverhampton, Chemnitz, Lucca, Geneva, Saragossa, Granada, Verona, Brest, Padua, Halifax, Devonport, Amiens, Rochdale, Utrecht, Nismes, Versailles, Gothenburg, Nikolaieff; thirty-six between 50,000 and 60,000 — Greenock, Brunswick, Montpellier, Tula, Krefeld, Alessandria, Swansea, Zurich, Modena, Posen, Maria-Theresiopol, Croydon, Limoges, Carthagena, Mainz, Southampton, Palma, Stockport, Mülhausen, Nancy, Halle, BeιdichefΓ, Bath, Nice, Jerez de la Frontera, Rennes, Merthyr Tydvil, F.ssen, Metz, Augsburg, Reggio, Bari, Pisa, Seraievo, Gallipoli, Philippopel.

It must of course be kept in mind that lists like the above can only present an approximate view of the facts,—first, because tbe censuses or estimates of the various places are not strictly contemporaneous and do not proceed on the same methods; and, secondly, because the areas to which they apply are determined by different considerations in different cases. Jt is not unfrequently hard to say what ought to be accepted as the limits between town and not-town,—whether ancient villages and hamlets to which the city has grown outwards, or the modern suburbs which it has built at short distances, should be included or excluded. With those cities which have kept the characteristics of the walled towns of the mediaeval period the matter is easily settled, but in most cases the modern city has either got rid of its walls and turned their site into promenades or boulevards, or, retaining them as an interesting historical monument, has overflowed their limits in all available directions. In some very modem instances, such as Elberfeld-Barmen in Prussia, clusters of dwelling-houses and industrial establishments have sprung up sporadically along a convenient valley; and while there are large gaps in what we may call the area of architectural occupation, the various groups have a complete community of social and commercial life. Municipal boundaries give us but little assistance, for these are modified not only by the different municipal systems of the different countries, but also by all kinds of local conveniences, traditions, and rivalries.

An enormous increase has taken place since the French Revolution, and indeed within a much shorter period, in the size of the military establishments throughout Europe. The rivalries and jealousies of the various nations have led them to vie with each other in the strength of their armies and navies; and as it is impossible to withdraw more than a certain number of men from productive labour to non-productive drill and display, a strange return, under greatiy modified conditions, has been made to that earlier state of society in which the army was the whole mass of the male population capable of bearing arms. Universal obligation or liability to personal service as a soldier is recognized by Germany, Austria, Hungary, Greece. Italy, France, Spain, Porcugal, Denmark, Switzerland, and Turkey. In Belgium the army is recruited by conscription, in Russia mainly by conscription, and in the Netherlands and in Norway and Swedeu partly by conscription and partly by voluntary enlistment. According to the Swiss constitution, there can be no standing army within the federal territory. The following table, quoted by Kolb from a paper by Freiherr von Fircks in the Journal of the Prussian statistical bureau, gives an estimate of the military forces of the principal states in 1859 and 1874 :— [table]

Thus the only nation which had decreased its force during that period was Denmark; France, instead of having one soldier to every 58 of the population, had one to every 37; Great Britain, instead of one to 119, had one to 71. Since 1874 matters have not greatly changed. According to the Almanac de Gotha for 1878, the several states rank as follows, taken in the order of the strength of their forces in time of peace:— [table]

The total amounts to upwards of 3,000,000, or very nearly the population of Scotland or of the largest city in the world: in other words it forms one per cent, of the whole population of the Continent, more than one in fifty of the male population, or probably about one in fifteen of the adult male population. The expense incurred is enormous,—the average sum paid by each individual for the defence of his country being, according to the Almanac de Gotha :— [table]

The maritime nations, almost without exception, maintain a considerable navy for warlike purposes; and the greater powers have lavished their wealth on experiment after experiment in the endless task of mutual competition for the most destructive and indestructible fleet. In 1877-78 Britain had 58 ironclads (of which 47 are described as efficient), France 58, Germany 20, Russia 29, Austria-Hungary 14, Italy 16, Turkey 15 large and 18 small, Spain 10, and the Netherlands 17. The difference of size and structure of the individual vessels makes the fleets of the several countries practically incommensurable in a general survey; and withorrt the actual test of conflict it would be hard to say which of the approximately equal equipments is the most powerful. An American official investigator in 1877 decided in favour of Britain, which not only manufactures her own armoured ships, but has constructed a large number of vessels for Russia, Turkey, Spain, Holland, Italy, Denmark, Greece, and Portugal.

A most important result of the military expenses of the different countries has been the extraordinary development of national debts. In 1848 the total for all the European states was about £1,700,000,000; by 1873 it had increased to £4,680,000,000, or at the rate of £119,000,000 annually. Each successive war—the Crimean, the French-Austrian, the Prussian-Austrian, and the French-German—has added to the load. Mr Robert Dudley Baxter, in a paper in the Journal of the Statistical Society, 1875, arranged the countries in groups according to the rate of interest they paid on the market price. The states of low interest, paying from 3 to 4 per cent., were the United Kingdom, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, and Germany; the states of moderate interest, 5 to 6∣ per cent., Russia and France; the states of high interest, 6J to 10 per cent., Portugal, Hungary and Austria, Italy, and Turkey; while Spain, paying upwards of 16 per cent., ranked as astate of excessive interest. According to a table furnished by Dr Kolb, if the several national debts were equally distributed over the respective populations every inhabitant of Portugal would have to pay about £27, every inhabitant of France about £25. 4s., of Great Britain £24, 15s., of Spain £22, 10s., of the Netherlands £18, 18s., of Italy £16, 16s., of Turkey £13, of Austria-Hungary £10, of Belgium £5, 17s., and of Russia £5, 5s. The country which ranks lowest is Switzerland, which has no standing army,—the average for every man being there only about 8s. or 9s. Were it not for the enormous development of European commerce such a state of matters could not be supported, and even as it is several countries have been practically, if not formally, bankrupt during the present century. The following table gives the annual revenues of the different countries :— [table]

The commerce of Europe may be said to have had its beginning when the people of the early stone period bartered on from horde to horde the flint or jade best fitted for their weapons, and there is reason to believe that far back in prehistoric times the amber of the Baltic found its way across the Alps to add a new element to Italian decoration. It was not till the Roman period, however,That the great lines of traffic were distinctly laid; Rome was the first European city whose necessities and desires formed as it were a great centre of combustion requiring a continual current from all directions to feed the ever-brightening flame. Since the 10th century, when the northern nations had finally settled in their present seats, the commercial activity of the continent has increased from generation to generation, and in none has it made a greater advance than in the present. Europe has now a hundred Romes; and the mightiest of them is to the Rome that then was as the world of the 19th century is to the “world” of the first. Along with increased necessities and more varied desires have been developed greater possibilities of supply and satisfaction; and the commerce of Europe has become the commerce of the globe.

The great indispensables are food and clothing, and in regard to neither of these is Europe self-sufficing. Austria, Russia, Roumania, and Denmark are the only countries that grow a sufficient quantity of the cereals to maintain a regular export, and even these are indebted to foreign supply for much of their ordinary food materials. Russia annually produces about 644,000,000 bushels of grain, and of this she can spare upwards of 120,000,000. The chief corn-growing districts are New Russia and Bessarabia, and the principal ports of outlet are Odessa, Taganrog, Rostoff, Mariupol, and Berdiansk. Eugland and France purchase most of the wheat, and Germany most of the rye. Austria-Hungary produces about 400,000,000 bushels; but it is only in favourable years that the export exceeds the import. Roumania has an average harvest of about 89,000,000 bushels, and exports to the value of about <£4,500,000. Denmark counts about 79,000,000 bushels of produce, and has a surplus of 65,000,000. England and Ireland derived in 1874 about 63 per cent, of its foreign wheat from the L r nited States and Canada, 11 per cent, from Russia, 8 per cent, from Germany, and 4 per cent, from Chili. The value of the whole import amounted to upwards of <£51,000,000; and it is calculated that on the average England requires the produce of about 4,500,000 acres of foreign wheat fields. The average harvest in France yields about 658,000,000 bushels; and in favourable years she has a small export. Germany produces about 715,000,000, but requires at least £80,000,000 worth additional. Belgium’s medium harvest reaches 64,000,000 bushels, but it is never sufficient for the population; in 1873 they paid upwards of <£64,000,000 for foreign supplies. The Netherlands produce about 31,000,000, and purchase to the extent of £3,000,000. The Italian harvest furnishes about 282,000,000 bushels, besides 27,000,000 bushels of rice, but the import exceeds the export sometimes to a very high value. In favourable years Sweden and Norway yield 82,000,000 bushels: the former country exports oats and barley, and imports rye, wheat, and meal; the latter, with a surplus of oats, requires a large foreign supply of all other grains. The Spanish produce varies from 27 to 200 millions of bushels, but about £2,300,000 worth have to be imported. Portugal, with a mean harvest of 30,000,000 bushels, purchases to the amount of £250,000. For the whole of the continent the total harvest may be stated at about 4,893,000,000 bushels.

Europe finds greater difficulty in satisfying its demands for animal food. The average consumption per head of population is rising iu all the principal countries; and though the modern stock-raiser can produce a greater quantity of flesh per ox or sheep, it is in several districts found more profitable to turn the ground to other uses, and sheep and cattle farming are consequently on the decline. There has thus grown up a great import trade, not only of Jiving animals, but, within the last twenty years, of preserved meat, the principal sources being North and South America and Australia. The trade is yet in its infancy, and trustworthy statistics are not readily accessible.

An ever-growing addition to the food supplies of Europe is made in the form of what are called colonial wares— sugar, tea, coffee, &c. Though the native production of beet sugar amounts on an average to 22 or 23 million cwt. per annum, that would only furnish about i lb on an average to each inhabitant; while as far back as 1866, according to Robert Burger’s calculation, the average demand was more than 11 lb per head, and in Britain had reached about 42 lb. The consumption, moreover, has since then increased enormously—Great Britain having advanced to 62 lb per head, France from 13 lb to 19 lb, and Germany from 10 lb to 15 It). Almost the same might be said of tea, in the consumption of which Britain again stands first, requiring about 4 H) a head per annum; and of coffee, of which Belgium requires the greatest average supply, or about 9 lb a head. And to all this must be added the multitudinous articles of consumption from far and near that give such a cosmopolitan air even to an ordinary grocer’s shop. For that most universal of all clothing materials, cotton, Europe is almost entirely indebted to other parts of the world; and though it grows a large quantity of wool and no inconsiderable amount of silk, its demand for both far exceeds its domestic supply. So much, however, of what it imports is again exported in the form of manufactured goods, that it is almost impossible to obtain a correct estimate of its true consumption. For details on these enormous trades the reader may consult the separate articles. The European production of wool was reckoned in 1871 at upwards of 562,370,000 lb,—England contributing 159,000,000, France 91,108,000, and Russia 90,760,000 to the total. The production of silk is about 12,000,000 lb.

Some idea of the relative position of the separate countries in the general traffic of the world may be obtained from the following table of the strength of the commercial marine:— [table]

If it were not for the enormous development which has been attained by its manufacturing industries, Europe would have no means of paying for what the other continents can afford to send; it has comparatively few raw materials which it can give in exchange, and so it pays for them with its labour and its skill. The countries which rank as emphatically industrial are Great Britain, France, Saxony, Switzerland, Belgium, Würtemberg, Prussia, and Alsace-Lorraine. In the manufacture of iron Britain stands at the head of the list, especially for steel, wire, rails, and cast-iron. In the first department its principal rivals are Germany, France, Austria-Hungary, Sweden, and Belgium; in the second Germany, France, Sweden, and Belgium are also exporters, and Austria-Hungary and Italy manufacture for their own markets; and in the third the state of matters is much the same, with the exception that several other countries are also producers in a small way. Tho manufacture of cast-iron is more widely distributed, forming an important industry not only in most of the countries already named, but also in Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, &c. Tho same position of supremacy belongs to Britain for its cutlery, though a great deal of attention is devoted to this department by all the chief Continental nations. Austria, for example, produces yearly about 600,000 scythes, more than 1,000,000 sickles, and about 200, , 000 straw knives, and of the first it exports a large number, especially to Russia. Vienna has a great manufactory of fire-proof safes, and ranks with Steyr, Letten, Ferlach, Weipert, and Prague, in the production of military weapons. Prussian pens and needles are well known throughout the continent; and still better her cannon and needle-guns. In the manufacture of copper, brass, and lead, the first place belongs to France and Great Britain; and in that of zinc to Belgium, Great Britain, and Prussia. In bronze France is distinguished both by the quantity and variety of her productions. Great Britain, France, Austria, and Germany are the only countries in which scientific instruments are made in large numbers, and with excellent finish; in the manufacture of musical instruments the same countries stand high, but have a greater number of competitors. In watchmaking Britain, France, and Switzerland carry off the palm; the Belgian clocks are accounted excellent; and the products of the Black Forest in the same department are too well known to need even a passing mention. The ruder branches of the ceramic art are almost universally cultivated, but only a few countries furnish a large export of the finer wares. Porcelain is largely manufactured in Bohemia, at the royal potteries of Meissen and Berlin in Prussia, at Dresden in Saxony, at Limoges in France, at Copenhagen in Denmark, at the imperial potteries of St Petersburg, and at Stoke-upon-Trent and Worcester in England. Freiburg in Breisgau supplies the markets of a large part of the world with porcelain button knobs and beads; and the Thüringerwald and Sicily are noted for their little porcelain figures and ornaments. The manufacture of glass is also of the widest distribution. Austria-Hungary numbers about 300 glass-works, Germany rather more, Britain upwards of 220, France 175, Italy 70, and so on. Bohemia gives its name to a well-known class of goods; France takes the first place for its beads and glass-jewellery; and Belgium is perhaps even better known for supplying the common wants of the glazier. The polishing of precious stones is carried to greatest perfection in France; but Vienna, St Petersburg, London, Dublin, Berlin, and several other great cities also rank high. Amsterdam has long been the principal seat of the diamond trade. Bohemia and Baden find a valuable industry in the working up of their garnets and rock crystals; and Oberstein in Oldenburg is remarkable as the source of nearly all those fancy articles in agate which, under various name3—Scotch pebbles and the like—are sold throughout Europe. Rome is the principal seat of the production of cameos and mosaics, and marble-cutting has attained its greatest development i in Tuscany, It is impossible to enter into detail on the various industries which use wood as their raw material; almost every country and district has its share, and they differ not so much in the nature as the finish of the articles which they produce. In the produce of the turning-lathe Austria, Germany, England, and France rank highest, and they also keep their position in the department of wood-carving. Italy is first in straw-plaiting, which is of prime importance in Tuscany; and next come Switzerland and Belgium. Leather-making and its associated industries are of universal distribution; the brushmanufacture has reached its fullest development in England; and hair is most successfully turned to artistic account in France.

In the great department of spinning and weaving Britain stands facile princeps. Of the cotton manufacture, especially, it has long been the greatest centre, not only in Europe but in the world; but within the present generation the industry has been rapidly developing in Germany, France, Russia, and several other Continental countries. The relative position of each is indicated by the following table of the number of spindles employed in the trade: — [table]

In wool-spinning and cloth-weaving the chief countries are again Britain, Germany, France, and Belgium, and to these succeed Austria, Italy, Russia, Sweden, and Spain. As minor or domestic industries both branches have a very wide distribution. The greatest amount of silk is spun in Italy and France, and the latter country holds the first place in silk-weaving, though she has powerful competitors in Germany, Britain, and Switzerland. Great Britain again outstrips all her rivals in the general manufactures of flax, hemp, and jute; in linen thread she is excelled by France, and in the extent of its rope works by Russia. Linen weaving is widely distributed as a domestic industry, and is rapidly developing as a factory industry in Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands. The state of the paper trade may be gathered from the following statistics for 1874 [table]

The countries marked by an asterisk export part of their production. In paper-staining France ranks first, and Britain in the making of papier-maché. Sugar-refining is of most importance in Britain, France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany; and the more modern manufacture of chocolate flourishes best in France and Spain. Britain brews a greater quantity of beer than any other country, and Germany, Austria, and Belgium come next in order, Germany and France are the greatest manufacturers of brandy, and Holland has almost given its name to one of the principal liquors; but this whole department of industry is of the very widest distribution. Among the more peculiar and local branches may be mentioned the Kirschwasser and Eau de Cologne of Germany, the plum brandy of Roumania, Servia, and Bosnia, the aniseed liqueur of Albacete in Spain, and the famous productions of the monastic establishment at Chartreuse. Vinegar is most largely and successfully manufactured in France. In the preparation of tobacco, Germany stands first; and the Netherlands are indebted for a large trade in this department to their East Indian colonies. The soap manufacture has reached its highest development in France and Britain; while the greatest exporters of tallow are Russia, Roumania, and Servia. Sweden is especially famous for its matches, which are sent to all parts of the world. The preparation of ultramarine is of great importance in Germany; and Austria has unrivalled manufactures of white lead in Carinthia.

Such are a few of the main features of that wonderful industrial activity which is daily acquiring a more varied aspect and extending over a wider area. The younger rations are developing their resources, and turning their attention to industries that they had long neglected; and in the older nations almost every year sees an addition to the bewildering multiplicity of human occupations.

While most of the several countries, as appears by the accompanying table, are on the whole fairly supplied with internal railway communication, and a few have developed a nearly perfect system of primary and secondary lines, much has still to be done before the general international system will be approximately complete. Of natural obstacles the mountains are the most formidable, and at the head of the mountains in this respect, as in others, stand the Alps. Between all the countries of northern and central Europe regular traffic is easily maintained: the north of France, Belgium, Holland, and the north of Germany are practically one as far as the great network of railways is concerned. Between France and southern Germany the connexion is not so close, though the Franco-German frontier is crossed by four or five lines, and the Swiss system, which is well developed, affords several additional routes. Between Germany and Austria there are almost equal facilities, more especially along the borders of Bohemia and Saxony. Eastwards and southwards in Poland, Russia, and Austria, the meshes of the net grow very wide, but the main threads are knotted together and satisfy the necessities of international communication. Such is the state of the case in the countries of central Europe; but if the traveller wishes to proceed by rail to any of the three southern peninsulas, he finds himself in a very different position. From France he can enter Spain only by two routes, one of which takes him round the western end of the Pyrenees, and the other, opened in 1878, round the eastern end; at all other parts of the frontier the mountains bid defiance to the engineer. From Spain, where he will find the internal system still very incomplete, the traveller may cross the Portuguese frontier and proceed by rail direct to Lisbon, but if he wish to reach Oporto without visiting Lisbon he must resign himself to the old-fashioned road. His case is better if he turn in the direction of Italy: from France he may glide into Italy through the tunnel of the Col de Frejus, or as it is popularly called Mont Cenis, which was completed in 1870 and opened in 1871; or from Bavaria he may traverse the other extremity of the Alps by the Brennerbahn, and reach the Lombard plain by the valley of the Adige. By all other routes he must in the meantime accept the service of the diligence; but workmen have been busy since 1871 under the maβsif of St Gotthard, and within a few years he may be able to pass right through from Zurich to Bellinzona and Milan It has also been proposed to effect a communication between the railways of north Italy and the line of the Rhone valley by means of a tunnel through the Simplon; and one German engineer at least, Sturm, has a scheme for boring under Mont Blanc itself. Once in Italy, the traveller can proceed as far as Otranto at the eastern end of the peninsula, or to Reggio at the western. If, instead of Italy, it be his desire to visit the countries to the south of the Danube, the railway altogether fails him. By Austrian lines he may reach Sessek on the Save, Essek on the Drave, or Bazias on the Danube; or if he go round by Galicia, he may proceed south through Bulgaria, cross the Danube at Rustchuk, and continue as far as Varna on the Black Sea. But at no point is there any connexion with the Turkish system, or rather fragmentary beginnings of a system: the lines from Constantinople and Aghatch which meet to the south of Adrianople, stop short in the valley of the Maritza, and the line from Saloniki proceeds only as far north as Uskub. In Greece there is but one little line, from the Piraeus to Athens. By the Russian railways the traveller can journey direct south to Odessa, Nicolaieff, or Sebastopol on the Black Sea, to Taganrog or Rostoff on the Sea of Azυff, or even to Vladιkavkas in the Caucasus. Eastward he may advance as far as Tsaritsin or Saratoff on the Volga, and to Orenburg at the end of the Ural range. North-eastwards his limits are Nizhni-Novgorod and Vologda. According to the plans of the Russian Government, a few years will see the construction of lines of communication with eastern Siberia on the one hand and the new provinces of central Asia on the other. It is sufficient to mention the projected tunnel between France and England. The following table gives the length of the railway lines in the several countries for 1860 and 1875:— [table]

Since 1875 the railway contractors have not been idle. At the end of 1876 there were 16,872 miles open for traffic in Great Britain, and upwards of 5000 miles in course of construction. In the beginning of 1877 the Belgian lines amounted to 2228 miles or 3580 kilometres, and the French lines to 14,078 miles or 22,671 kilometres.

The telegraphic system, as appears by the accompanying table, is well developed throughout the continent, more especially in Switzerland, Great Britain, Belgium, Bavaria, and Wiirtemberg. As far as it is international, it is largely indebted to British enterprise and capital, and many of the most important companies have their centres in London. All the maritime countries have submarine cables. Norway has no fewer than 193, with a total length of 1233 nautical miles; Denmark 29, with a length of 101 miles; and Holland 18, with a length of 36. The three Russian cables of the Baltic have a total length of 62 miles, and unite Cronstadt with the capital, and the islands Osel and Aland with the continent. Of the 12 Italian cables the most important, about 118 miles long, communicates with Sardinia; and of the 6 Spanish three are devoted to Iviça, Minorca, and Majorca. Most of the 26 French cables are short, with the exception of that which stretches across.the Mediterranean from Marseilles to Algiers. Great Britain has a large number communicating with various parts of the continent, as well as with Ireland, the Channel Islands, Orkney and Shetland, the Hebrides, &c. Of prime importance to the continent at large are the great transatlantic cables, four of which have their European termini in the west of Ireland, while a fifth, the longest yet laid down, stretches from Brest in Brittany 2585 miles to St Pierre near Newfoundland, and a sixth from Lisbon to Pernambuco in Brazil. Two others are projected—one from Portugal, and another from the Shetland Islands round by the Faroes, Iceland, Greenland, &c. Direct communication is maintained between England and India by the lines of the Eastern Telegraph Company, and other lines continue the system as far as Australia on the one hand and Japan on the other.

Telegraphic Communication in Europe in 1875. [table]

Within recent years fresh attention has been directed to the older canal-system, which was by many regarded as having had its day. Not only are the canals which had fallen into partial decay being in many cases restored, but new canals are either constructed or planned. Without entering into the details of the separate national systems, some idea may be formed of the extent of this means of communication by the following facts. We may pa≡3 from the Rhone to the Loire, and from either river to the Seine; the Seine in its turn is connected with the Meuse and the Rhine; the Rhine communicates with the Danube in the south, and with the Ems and the Weser in the north; the Weser is already in communication with the lower part of the Elbe, and it is proposed to construct a line of canals to unite these rivers further inland; from the Elbe we pass by the Spree system to the Oder; the Oder, by means of its tributary the Wartha, gives access to the Vistula; and the Bug, a tributary of the Vistula, brings us to the great Russian network of rivers and canals by which we can journey from the Baltic to the Black Sea or the Caspian, or from either of these to the White Sea in the north. Thus it appears in brief that water highways exist between all the great river systems and all the principal seas. It was only in the summer of 1876 that the Dutch opened a new canal between Amsterdam and the sea; in 1877 the senate of Finland voted 200,000 rubles for a canal between the Baltic and the White Sea; and very extensive additions are proposed to the German system. A scheme has even been started by an American engineer, H. C. Spalding, for connecting the Black Sea and the Caspian, and thus increasing the area of the latter at the expense of the neighbouring steppes; and a less quixotic proposal contemplates a canal from the Don to the Volga across the ridge of nearest approximation. In Frauce there is already a line of water-way between the Bay of Biscay and the Mediterranean, but it is only available for inland traffic; and the proposal is now entertained of constructing nothing less than a ship canal. Au earlier and more extravagant project to make such a canal through Spain from Bilbao to the valley of the Ebro has naturally remained a dead letter.

Since the 18th century, there has been great advance in the general educational condition of Europe. That it is the duty of every state, if not to provide instruction for the rising generation of citizens, at least to see that it is provided, is a principle more and more thoroughly recognized and acted upon; aud the obscurantist doctrine that the lower classes become more ι∙evolutionary and dangerous by becoming more intelligent and better informed is less frequently employed as au open argument. Even in Turkey a law was at least passed in 1869 requiring the establishment of secondary schools and gymnasiums in the principal towns; and education is one of the matters dealt with in the proposed reforms of 1878. How slow the movement has beeu even in the more civilized countries is strikingly shown by the fact that England has not yet realized the far-sighted schemes suggested more than a thousand years ago by her wise West Saxon king, Alfred. The educational reformers of almost every country have had a hard battle to fight in their endeavours after a satisfactory organization, and compromise and half-measures have frequently been the order of the day. From time immemorial the clergy have had, and they certainly for a long time had a right to have, a predominant share in the control of all educational matters throughout Europe; the sacred books of the various forms of religion or doctrinal compendiums of individual sects have been the most familiar manuals of primary instruction; and even when the teacher has been a layman, ecclesiastical supervision more or less efficient has been added. The present tendency, even in countries like Italy on the one hand, and Sweden on the other, where there is little difference of creed among the population, is decidedly in favour of the teachers being laymen and the instruction secular. That the clergy do not readily acquiesce in the changes that diminish their influence is excusable; but at the same time their demands have occasioned the most lamentable obstruction to educational progress.

In order that primary education may be rendered universal, it has been found necessary to make it compulsory; and this has been done either directly or indirectly in all the great countries of Europe. It is now easier to name those that have not adopted direct compulsory measures than those that have adopted them. The former list includes France, Russia (with the exception of the Baltic provinces), Finland, Belgium, Turkey, Servia, and Montenegro. In England, the gradual extension qf the schoolboard system practically involves the extension of compulsory education, though the question is left in the hands of local authorities instead of being decided once for all by the central legislation. Owing to the differences existent between the organizations of the several countries, it is impossible to institute an exact comparison; but the following table, revised from Brachelli’s, presents an approximate survey :—

[table]

The countries of southern and eastern Europe are all very low in the scale; but several of them, and notably Italy, Greece, and Russia, are making rapid advances. The last of these has great difficulties to contend against in the extent of its territory and the sparseness of its population; but such a fact as the following speaks for itself: “In 1866,” says M. Hippeau, “in every 100 conscripts only one could read and write; in 1870 this number had risen to 11 in the 100.” Several of the local boards have recommended the adoption of obligatory attendance at school. Much less hopeful is the condition of Spain, where at the last census (1860) 72 percent, of the population could neither read nor write. Yet even there the movement is in the right direction. A fine contrast is afforded by the Scandinavian countries, where the peasantry have long been accustomed to relieve the tedium of their winter nights by reading the sagas of their native land, and by some of the Swiss cantons, where there are only 4 per cent, of the population totally uneducated. In France, according to the official statistics of 1875, there are 30 persons in every 100 unable to read or write; and in Belgium, according to the results of the census of 1866, 42 in every 100 above seven years of age are in the same condition. The high position of the German empire is mainly due to Prussia, which may be regarded as the forerunner of educational progress in Europe. Among the other states the differences are very considerable. Brunswick, Anhalt, Oldenburg, Saxony, and Thuringia rise above the average of 152 scholars to the 1000 inhabitants; Mecklenburg and Bavaria sink as low as 121 and 126 respectively. A high position is held by the free city of Bremen, where the public expenditure for education has risen from 0 60 of a mark in 1847-51 to 8 , 45 marks in 1872-76 for each head of the population. In Austria the contrasts between the provinces are enormous,—every thousand inhabitants in Silesia, Bohemia, Moravia, or Tyrol sending from 130 to 136 children to school; while in Galicia, Dalmatia, and Bukovina the numbers are only 29, 23, and 19.

If statistics are unsatisfactory in regard to the condition of primary schools, they are still more unsatisfactory as regards the institutions for the training and education of the primary teacher. Till some approximation be made between the systems of the several countries, it conveys almost no information to say that in Prussia there are 107 and in Russia 45, in Switzerland 32 and in Portugal 6. And still more impossible is it to institute a comparison with respect to the secondary schools and the various insti tutions devoted to instruction in special departments of art or science. In all the more advanced countries they are increasing in number and in the specialization of their work.

In Germany there are twenty-one universities, including the academy of Münster, with about 1983 professors and teachers, and a total attendance of 19,000 students. The best known are Berlin, Leipsic, Göttingen, Halle, Tübingen, Bonn, Heidelberg, Jena, and Erlangen. In Austria-Hungary there are ten, with 1018 professors, and upwards of 12,000 students. Italy numbers one more than Germany, with 1093 professors, and not far from 10,000 students. Russia has nine, including the Finland university of Helsingfors, and the practically German university of Dorpat. The total teaching staff numbers upwards of 600, and the students more than 7000. The four Scandinavian universities of Upsala, Lund, Christiania, and Copenhagen, count 280 professors and 2700 students. There are four in Holland, inclusive of the Amsterdam Academy, and four in Belgium, the number of professors being respectively 149 and 229, and that of students 2056 and 2272. Since the addition of Geneva, Switzerland has the like number, with a teaching staff of 250 to 300, and an attendance of upwards of 1200. Spain boasts of ten universities with 400 professors, and, if her statistics are correct, has more than 15,000 students. Portugal, in its one famous institute at Coimbra, has about 1000 students, many of whom are from Brazil and the colonies. A university was founded at Athens in 1837, another at Belgrade in 1838, and a third and fourth at Bucharest and Jassy in 1864. The professors number in all 128, and the students upwards of 2000. In France the organization of the higher education is peculiar: Bordeaux and Lyons are the only two cities besides Paris which have all the five faculties of theology, law, medicine, science, and literature, and it is only in Paris that they are incorporated into a “university.” In sixteen other towns there exist one or more of the separate faculties. The professors in Frauce exceed 420, with 14,500 students. The Catholics have free “universities” at Angers, Lyons, and Paris. Making allowance for defective statistics, it may be said that continental Europe has about 7000 persons engaged in university teaching, and that the students number from 88,000 to 90,000. In Britain the universities differ greatly from each other in constitution and arrangement. Oxford and Cambridge have together about 80 professors and over 5000 undergraduates. London university, which is merely an examining board, had 17,312 candidates for matriculation in 1877. Durham numbers 5 professors and 109 students. In the four Scotch universities there are 102 professors and about 5000 students. The Queen’s university, Ireland, has 54 professors and 745 students, and the Dublin university 39 professors and 1200 students.

Europe, and especially northern and Germanic Europe, has long been distinguished from eastern and southern countries by the greater social and educational equality existing between the sexes; but in this, as in so much else, there is still abundant room for improvement. A powerful movement has set in towards a fuller recognition of the rights of woman; and the right to instruction is recognized as one of the most fundamental. A greater assimilation is in most of the more civilized countries being effected between the education given to boys and girls; and a powerful party, with powerful arguments, support the thesis that equal opportunities should also be afforded to young men and to young women. In Prussia the general movement is represented by the Victoria or Lette Union at Berlin, and the Otto Petter Union at Leipsic, both of which have founded institutions for the higher education of women. The Jews of Frankfort-on-the-Maine have established two important schools—the Philanthropinum and the Miister-schide; and the city of Carlsruhe has had a superior school for σirls since 1826. The university of Zurich has set the example of the free admittance of women; the London University opened its gates to them in 1877 ∖ and the older universities of England and Scotland have at least sanctioned extramural lectureships and condescended to examine if not to teach them. A women’s college has been opened at St Petersburg by Catherine Dikhova under imperial patronage; Hungary has a similar institution; and so the innovation is becoming familiar, and within a generation or two the condition of female education at the beginning of this century bids fair to appear a semi-barbarian state of things hardly credible at so recent a date.

To recapitulate, European education is being more widely diffused, is passing from the control of the clergy or the private citizen into the hands of the state, is becoming more secular and less sectarian, and in its higher departments shows a growing catholicity towards the more modern aspects of thought and life.

Europe is pre-eminently the country of monotheism, which forms the central doctrine, not only of its dominant religion, Christianity, but also of the minor riyals Judaism and Mahometanism. To none of these three religions has it given birth; and, what is more remarkable, its peculiarly Aryan population have adopted their religion from a Semitic people. The various nations of Europe were still polytheistic when they first entered within the historic horizon; and this polytheism has left more numerous traces of its influence than superficial observers might imagine. Not only have the gods of the Greek and Roman pantheons and their ruder rivals of the north obtained an immortality in the literature and art of all the cultured nations of Europe, but amid the manifold traditions and half-unconscious beliefs of the common people there are fragments of older and baser creeds. Much has still to be done before the amount of such survivals can be estimated with anything like accuracy, but that their number is considerable has been already well established. Nor need it be matter of surprise when we consider how recent the introduction of Christianity into Europe really is, and how, to vast masses of men, it came, not as a conviction of the intellect or a captivation of the heart, but as the infliction of a conqueror or the command of a king; and how, even when it was adopted through the persuasive eloquence of genuine missionaries, it obtained, in many cases, but a divided allegiance, and had to accept and sanctify as best it might the rites and symbolism of the religion which it expelled. That the English still speak of Wednesday and Thursday, that the French have their Vendredi and Mardi, the Italians their Venerdi and Martedi, is of purely historic interest, and implies no lingering attachment to Woden or Thor, to Venus or Mars; but there is no country in Christian Europe in which the popular ideas about supernatural agency in general are not the mongrel products of paganism and Christianity.

Christianity in Europe is broken up into three main divisions, the Roman Catholic Church, the Greek or Eastern Church, and the Protestant or Evangelical Church; and each of these has received more or less numerous modifications and subdivisions under the influence of different, political and social environments. Roman Catholicism not only can boast of the greatest number of adherents, but has the greatest claim to unity, at least in its external organization, and stands in direct contrast to many portions of the Protestant Church, which, while maintaining the superiority of their respective creeds, ac knowledge the local and temporary character of their constitutions. The unity, however, has all along been more nominal than real,—rather the beau-ideal of the administrative hierarchy than the actual condition of the organization which they control. Discordant elements have frequently threatened a disruption; severe contests have taken place between the spirit of centralization in Rome and the desire for local independence in individual countries; and in the present century the irreconcilability of two great parties has given rise to the so-called Old Catholics in Germany and Switzerland, who in the latter country at least seem likely to break up iuto two distinct sections. There are two religious communities in Europe which occupy a special relation to the Roman Catholic Church, the United Greeks and the United Armenians, otherwise known as Catholics of the Greek rite and Catholics of the Armenian rite. They both acknowledge the supremacy of the pope, but they are permitted to retaiu many peculiarities of organization and ritual. The United Greeks have an archbishop at Gran in Hungary, and another at Lemberg in Galicia. The United Armenians are found in Russia and Austria, but are still more numerous in the Ottoman empire. A schism not unlike that of the Old Catholics broke out amongst them in 1869. The pope by the bull Reversuris claimed to exercise certain rights which his predecessors had never enforced, and the Armenians not only rebelled, but drove their patriarch Hussan into exile because he supported the papal authority. The small church of Utrecht, which dates from the year 1704, retains the doctrines of the church of Rome, but emphasizes the superiority of the councils over the pope, and has no connexion with the papal organization.

The Greek Church has beeu divided by political influences into several independent communities, each with its own organization, but all united by a common creed, and the consciousness of a common historic origin. The head of the whole church was at one time the patriarch of Constantinople; but he never had the same supremacy as the pope, and has gradually sunk to be little more than tho head of that branch which is subject to the Porte. The Greek Church of Russia began to establish its independence in the middle of the 13th century; till about the middle of the 15th it sent its nominees for the office of metropolitan of Kieff to the patriarch of Constantinople for consecration; afterwards the consecration was performed by a council of Russian bishops; and in 1589 the metropolitan was raised to be the ecclesiastical peer of the patriarch. Peter the Great allowed the office to lapse, and supplied its place by a council or synod, which still remains the central authority in the Russian church, the emperor being recognized as the supreme defender of the faith, and practically holding the place of chief administrator. The Austrian branch of the Greek Church is also governed by a general synod composed of all the bishops under the presidency of the patriarch of Carlowitz, and three provincial synods, the Austrian proper meeting at Czernowitz, the Servian at Carlowitz, and the Roumanian at Her-maunstadt. After the declaration of the political independence of Greece, it was natural that theι⅛ should arise a desire for the independence of the national church; and the patriarch of Constantinople was obliged to recognize it» autonomy in 1850. A similar movement took place in Bulgaria in 1870. Though the Greek church is dominant in Russia, there is a very considerable number of sectarian communities. Chief of these are the “Raskolniks” (separatists or non-conformists), who seek to maintain a more scrupulous accuracy in the ritual than the state church enforces. Of totally different character are the heretical sects, some of whom, as the Molokani, show great reverence fur the letter of scripture, while others, as the Skoptsi or Eunuchs, profess the wildest anti-scriptural doctrines, and are carried into excesses of practical fanaticism.

The Protestant churches of Western Europe, which have so marvellously exemplified what naturalists call propagation by fission, may be doctrinally divided into two great groups,—the “Lutheran,” which maintain the platform of the great Reformer; and the “Reformed,” which have advanced further in their divergence from Roman Catholicism. Politically there are three great classes—state churches, free churches enjoying state endowments, and free churche3 which either from necessity or choice are entirely independent. To the Lutheran group belong the state churches of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, and that form prevails also in Prussia, Hanover, and the Baltic provinces of Russia; the “Reformed” includes the Cal vinistic churches of Holland and Scotland, and a great number of ecclesiastical organizations in England, Scotland, Switzerland, Germany, and France. The established church of England, though frequently classed with the Lutheran group, has so many points of contact in doctrine and ritual, both with Calvinism on the one hand and Roman Catholicism on the other, that it may be allowed to stand by itself. In Prussia, Baden, and a few of the smaller German states, the two parties are associated under the title of the United Lutheran Church, and have very close relations with the political administration. It is impossible to do more than mention the minor subdivisions of Moravians, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists, Independents, Quakers, Unitarians, for which the reader may consult the separate articles, and such works as Stäudliu’s Kirchliche Geographie, Wagger’s K. Statistik, Döllingers The Church and the Churches, and De MestraΓs Tableau de l’ Église Chrétienne.

Mahometanism or Islam has comparatively few adherents iu Europe, and has moreover ceased to be aggressive. If it still occupies in Constantinople one of the noblest of Christian churches, it is more than six hundred years since it surrendered in Cordova one of the noblest of its mosques. Its adherents are mainly Turks, Tatars, and Slavonians; and outside of Turkey they are nowhere very numerous except in southern Russia. Judaism, which at one time had no small proselytizing energy, has for a long period in Europe been nothing but the religion of the people of Jewish descent. It is divided into two great organizations, the so-called orthodox party representing traditionalism, and the reformed party representing freedom of thought. Even among the orthodox considerable laxity of observance is creeping in, and marriages with Christians are growing more and more frequent. Buddhism is still professed by the Calmucks of southern Russia; and the Tcheremisses, and several cognate tribes, and part of the Lapps, Finns, and Samoyedes, still preserve their pagan creeds and customs. The following table from Brachelli gives approximately the numerical strength of the various religions:— [table]

The political history of Europe begins with the Greeks; but while they contributed more extensively than any people have done since to the theory of government, they have left practically no trace of their political organization iu the present association of states. From first to last, in spite of religious and political confederations, and of the unifying influence of the Macedonian hegemony, they retained what in modern phraseology would be called their particularism,—each city or state working out its own political development and testing the value of the various forms of political life for itself. The Greeks were not a conquering people; they felt nothing of the land-hunger of modern nations; and even the great conquests to which they were led by the Asiatic genius of Alexander the Great did not present themselves as acquisitions of territory. They were great founders of cities, and their colonies were distributed along the coasts of Europe from Spain in the west to the Black Sea in the east; but if all the ground that they thus occupied were added together, it would form a comparatively small country. The city, wherever it was, continued an integral part of Hellas, but Hellas was. rather the name of a people aud a civilization than of a country or a state. In this respect no greater contrast could be found than that afforded by the next people of European history. The history of Rome is almost from its beginning to its close a history of conquest; the limits of its territorial advance were no sooner fixed than the period of decadence set in. Where the Greeks had planted a city the Romans subjugated a region. And thus it is that to the present day the lines of Roman organization are as distinctly traceable on the political map as the lines of Roman roadway in local topographies.

As the Greeks had been the great defenders of Europe from the encroachments of Persian ambition, so the Romans repulsed the Semitic power of the Carthaginians; and as the defence against the Persians was the great determinating factor in later Greek development, so the repulse of the Carthaginians was the prime factor in the later Roman development. The Punic wars led to the conquest of Sicily and Spain; a·ud the conquest of these gave at least a new emphasis to what was already perhaps a national tendency. Iu 227 b.c. proconsuls were appointed for the province of Sicily and the province of Sardinia and Corsica; the second Punic war left Rome master in 201 of the greater part of Spain and supreme in the western Mediterranean; the capture of Numantia in 133 put the rest of Spain in its power; the battle of Pydna secured the subjugation of Greece; the campaigns of Julius Caesar added the vast territory of Gaul to its domain; and when Augustus effected the great change in the constitution which left its effete nomenclature to the 19th century, he was able to adopt the Danube, the Rhine, and the ocean as the northeastern boundary of the European part of his empire. His rule was paramount in all the region which now comprises Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium, western Holland, Rhenish Prussia, parts of Baden and Wiirtemberg, most of Bavaria, Switzerland, Italy, Tyrol, Austria Proper, Western Hungary, Croatia, Slavonia, Servia, Turkey in Europe, aud Greece. The populations of many of these countries had already begun to be Romanized in language and customs, but most of them were still distinctly aliens. During the succeeding centuries of the empire a few comparatively unimportant oscillations of froutier took place, aud a few additional elements were added to the motley conglomerate of Roman citizenship; but the main features were still the same when Constantine introduced his new administrative distribution, aud fixed the seat of government in the city which still bears his name. Christianity, which now received the sanction of the civil power, bad gradually changed from an organ or political disintegration into an organ of political union. The worship of Christ and the service of the empire formed two powerful bonds of association between the members of discordant races, and even proved strong enough to break up several tribes into two sections,—one of which was Christian and imperial, and the other pagan and barbarian. But even in the reign of Constantine the frontiers were with difficulty maintained: he had himself to resume the contest more than once with several powerful Germanic peoples. Before long, the whole of the outer world to the north-east was in motion. The Visigoths, or West Goths z were pressing on the lower Danube; behind them, in the countries of the Bug and Dnieper, lay the East Goths; and further east were the warlike, horse-loving Alans in the country of the Don and the Volga. Other German tribes or confederations—Franks, Saxons, Alemanni, Longobards—had settled or were settling along the upper Danube aud the Rhine, and had crossed or were crossing into Roman territory. Far to the east, over the country now known a3 Russia, the Scythians and Sarmatians were nomadizing; and in the outskirts, along the Ural, we can dimly distinguish the Magyars, the Avars, the Petchenegs, and other tribes that were afterwards to force their way westward. In the reign of Valens a new impetus was given to the barbarian hordes. The Huns, a wild nomadic people, suddenly appeared on the lower Don, subjugated the Alans and the East Goths, and drove the defeated West Goths across the Roman frontiers. As a Christian people the fugitives obtained permission to settle on the south of the Danube; but the treatment they received from the Roman officials drove them to rebellion; they defeated Valens in the great battle of Adrianople, and threatened to invade Italy itself; and it was not till the reign of Theodosius that they were persuaded by important concessions to take peaceful possession of lands in Moesia, Dacia, and Thracia.

Hitherto the empire had, in spite of all the confusion of rival emperorsand intrusive tribes, maintained a theoretical unity; in 395 a.d. a division was effected which practically proved definitive. Arcadius, the eldest son of Theodosius, became emperor of the East, with his capital at Constantinople; and Honorius his brother became emperor of the West, with his capital not at Rome but at Ravenna. Had the Roman territory been confined to Europe the division would have been extremely unequal, as Arcadius only received the country to the south of the Danube and east of the Drinus, or, in other words, little more than European 1αrkey and Greece; like the sultan’s, his possessions were mainly in Asia and Africa.

Instead of tracing the gradual disintegration of the Western empire, with its monotonous detail of invasions, concessions, repulses, <fcc., it will be well to pass down to the 6th century, and see what has been effected in the interval. We now find the German race almost everywhere in the ascendant. England is in the hands of the English; the kingdom of the Franks extends from Brittany to Thuringia; the West Goths are dominant in the greater part of Spain and nearly all the country to the south of the Loire; the Suevi are in possession of the remainder of Spain; the Burgundians occupy a compact territory, which includes, besides the basin of the Rhone and Saone, parts of the contiguous basins of the Rhine, the Seine, and the Loire; and the East Goths, under the sanction of the emperor of the East, hold sway in the rest of western Europe, from Provence to the Danube and from the Alps to the Sicilian Strait. Outside of the old frontier the Gepidae (also German) have established a kingdom in the country to the north of the Danube; on the. north-west they are conterminous with the Lombards; the Thuringians are established to the west of the Böhmerwald; the Saxons he between the Meuse and the Oder; the Danes are in possession of Denmark, and the other Scandinavian peoples hold the country from which they derive their name. It would seem as if Europe were in a fair way to become a German confederation, or, it might be, a German empire. But all over the old Latin area the Germans are ceasing to be Germans; and beyond that area, both in Europe and Asia, there are other peoples destined to play a part in the settlement of the West. The Bulgarians, a Mongolian tribe, have reached the country between the Dnieper and the mouth of the Danube; the Czechs or Bohemians, already occupy the country which now bears their name; the Croats are to the north of the Lombards; and other Slavonic tribes have pushed south to the coast of the Adriatic.

If we again pass down for about two centuries, the whole scene is changed. The West Goths and East Goths have almost disappeared,—the former only living on in the little kingdom of Asturia in the north of Spain; to the south of the Ebro and the Douro the country is in the hands of Arabs, or Moors, who first crossed the Strait of Gibraltar iu 711; the king of the Franks is that Charles the Great, or Charlemagne, who is the mightiest monarch Europe has seen since Constantine, and he has not only extended his kingdom on all sides, but he has been chosen emperor of the West, and his authority is acknowledged from the Ebro to the Elbe, and from the North Sea to the Tiber. A new political power has arisen in the pope, or bishop of Rome, whose spiritual supremacy is beginning to be widely recognized. The Eastern or Byzantine empire is more and more exposed to the intrusion of Slavonians: they have under the name of Servians established a considerable kingdom between the Adriatic and the middle Danube, and, mingled with other races like the Bulgarians and the Avars, they occupy a large region to the north of the Danube. Tn the country to the north of the Black Sea, as far east as the Volga, has grown up a great kingdom called the kingdom of the Khazars, with its capital at Balangiar or Astrakhan; the people is mainly of Ugrian stock, but it has accepted the Jewish religion, and, allowing complete religious toleration, is mingled with representatives of many nationalities; politically it continues important for centuries as a bulwark against the advance of the Slavonic tribes from the north. Of all these states from the Atlantic to the Volga the one that showed most powerfully at the time, and which has lived most prominently in historic record, is undoubtedly the empire of Charles the Great; but of all it was the first to perish: even the nucleus of his kingdom was divided into two—that of the West Franks and that of the East F ranks.

By the end of the 10th century the map again presents great modifications. The Mahometans are still in possession of a great part of Spain, and the northern region has been broken up into several independent states—the kingdom of Leon, the little kingdom of Pampeluna, and the countship of Castile or Burgos. The western Franks now form the kingdom of France with its capital at Paris, and since 987 have been ruled by the dynasty of Capet, which will continue to modern times. The duchies of Gascony, Aquitaine, Burgundy, and Normandy, and the countships of Flanders, Champagne, and Toulouse, have been gathering strength, and will maintain fur centuries a certain amount of independence. Germany has recently become the representative of the Roman empire through the coronation of Otto the Great of Saxony; and Otto III. is forming plans for the increase of the imperial power. His authority is recognized by the dukes, not only of Lorraine, Alemannia, Bohemia, and Carinthia, but by those of Sppleto, Benevento, and Salerno, as well as by the minor potentates of Italy, with a few exceptions in the far south. The duchy of Poland and the kingdom of Hungary are less formally and steadily subordinate. Between Germany and France lies the kingdom of Burgundy or Arles, which must not be confounded with the duchy of Burgundy, and whose limits extend from Basel to Provence, including all the lower basin of the Rhone. In the Balkan peninsula the Servian principality maintains its independence, and the Bulgarians have extended their power from the Danube southwards to Thermopylae. Among the peoples to the east the Russians are already the most powerful; and the great empire of the Khazars has disappeared.

During the next five centuries Europe was full of hurry to and fro, of petty strivings and plunderings, of great wars and invasions, of crusades and conquests. At one time it appeared as if the Scandinavian peoples were to take possession of England, and at another as if the English were to become masters of France; the French attempted the annexation of Italy; the most powerful of the Italian commonwealths extended its authority over the islands and mainland of Greece; all Europe sent forth its armies for the recovery of the sacred sepulchre; and all Europe was in alarm at the advance of the Ottoman power. Amidst all the confusion and conflict, the modern nations were slowly taking shape under the influence of a rapidly developing feudalism, and by the time we reach the 16 th century we can speak of France and Germany, of Spain and Portugal, of Poland, Russia, and Turkey, with something of the same meaning in the words as they possessed till the Great Revolution.

In the second decade of the 16th century the house of Hapsburg, in the person of Charles V., attained an unprecedented preponderance. Through the action of the laws of inheritance he acquired the Netherlands, the Spanish monarchy with the kingdom of Naples, and the Austrian states of his paternal grandfather; and in 1519 he was elected to the imperial throne. On his abdication he left the German states to his brother Ferdinand, and the rest of his possessions to his son Philip. Between the various countries thus absurdly united with the Spanish crown there was no kind of cohesion, and even in a period of repose the association could hardly have been expected to last. The 16th century was anything but a period of repose. The extent of the new monarchy raised the rivalry of England and France; the Turkish power was dangerously aggressive in the east; and religious discord added a new and potent element of disintegration. War followed war in rapid succession; and many of the most flourishing parts of the continent were laid waste with a desolation which centuries of peace but partially effaced.

It was not till 1648 that the treaty of Westphalia gave the greater part of the continent another period of repose. The contest of which it was the immediate termination left Sweden the most powerful of the Scandinavian states, with important acquisitions from Denmark and Norway, from Germany, Russia, and Poland. The Protestant Netherlands and Switzerland were now formally recognized as independent. In Germany the house of Hapsburg was no longer in a position of undisputed supremacy; the houses of Hohenzollern, Saxony, and Wittelsbach had all gained in importance; and, instead of a powerful kingdom, there was nothing but a “lax confederation of states.” The authority of Spain was still acknowledged in Naples and Sicily, in Milan and Sardinia, as well as in the Catholic portion of the Netherlands. Venice was the" principal native power in the north of Italy, and a large part of the central region was in the hands of the church. France had increased her territory by the acquisition of Alsace, and was the most formidable military state in the continent. The three kingdoms of the English crown had for some time been united under a common dynasty. Russia was recovering her position; Poland was already beginning to decline; the Turkish power was losing ground before the Germans and Hungarians, and, as a natural consequence, the Hungarian kingdom was gathering strength.

The rest of the 17th century was mainly remarkable for the series of wars with which the name of Louis XIV. of France is more immediately associated. They produced in the long run comparatively small alterations in the partitioning of territory, as the treaty of Ryswick was in the main an instrument of restoration. Of much greater effect was the death of Charles II. of Spain in 1700, followed as it was by the war of the Spanish succession, in which all the principal states were more or less embroiled. At the close of the contest the Bourbons of France got possession of Spain, Sicily, and Parma; the Austrian branch of the house of Hapsburg obtained the Spanish Netherlands, Naples, Sicily, and Milan; the Prussian kingdom of the Hohenzollerns was formally recognized and its territory increased; the duke of Savoy became king of Sardinia; and England secured the occupation of Gibraltar and Minorca. The principal effect of the wonderful campaigns of Charles XII. of Sweden was to leave his country in a condition so exhausted that, at the peace of 1720-1, it had to give up a great part of what it had acquired during the 17th century. A totally different result attended the equally daring but more politic enterprises of Frederick the Great, who greatly increased his territory and secured for his kingdom a brilliant future in Europe. About the same time, under Peter the Great, Russia was making conquests both in south and north, and was preparing to take her place side by side with the western powers.

In the latter half of the 18th century, or, more precisely, about the year 1785, the political map presented the following divisions. The German empire under Joseph II. extended over an area of about 255,120 square miles, had a population of upwards of 26,000,000, and consisted of no fewer than 289 states, of which 61 were free cities. The portion of the Austrian possessions which was not included in the empire had an area of 152,000 square miles, and a population of 9,250,000; and the corresponding portion of Prussia had an area of 29,764 square miles, and a population of 1,500,000. To France, at that time under Louis XVI., belonged no less than 201,970 square miles, and a population of 26,000,000. The inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland numbered no more than 12,000,000; and Spain, with her area of 195,600 square miles, had only about 10,500,000. Italy was broken up among eleven states, and her total population was estimated at 16,250,000. The kingdom of tho Two Sicilies included the island of Sicily and all the southern portion of the peninsula as far north as Terracina in the west and Ascoli in the east; to the north lay the States of the Church, extending in the east to the mouth of the Po, and in the west to the borders of Tuscany; Tuscany in its turn was conterminous with the territory of Lucca and the duchy of Modena; to the west of Modena lay the territory of Genoa and the duchy of Parma; the duchy of Milan stretched along the northern half of the valley of the Po from Lucarno to M·irandola; the kingdom of Sardinia included Savoy and all the country westwards to the frontiers of Switzerland and France; and the republic of Venice stretched its authority from Lucca in the west to Λquileia in the east, as well as along the Dalmatian coast to the neighbourhood of the Narenta. The republic of the united Netherlands had 7290 square miles of territory, and 2,250,000 of a population. Norway was politically united with Denmark; and the king of Denmark, Christian VII., consequently held sway over an area of 165,830 square miles, and a population of 2,250,000. The Swedish territory was about 233,860 square miles, but the population was only 3,000,000. Switzerland occupied 14,880, with 1,750,000 inhabitants. The republic .of Poland, in spite of the partition of 1772, by which it lost 6600 square miles, still possessed a territory of upwards of 223,000 square miles, and a population of about 14 000,000. Russia held 1,593,300 square miles, and Turkey about 215,000; and their respective populations amounted to 25,000,000 and 15,000,000.

In 1789 the great French Revolution had fairly commenced, and for the next quarter of a century the history of Europe is little more than a history of France and her friends, and France and her foes. Never since the invasions of the Germanic nations had there been such a complete overturning of all existing political arrangements as was effected by the daring despotism of Napoleon. In 1812 the French empire included, not only France, Belgium, Holland, and Luxembourg, but also the whole country to the left of the Rhine, the mainland of Sardinia, part of Modena, Tuscany, and Rome, Geneva, Neufchatel, and Valais—a total area of no less than 339,000 square miles, with an aggregate population of 42,366,000. The 35 states of the confederation of the Rhine, including the kingdoms of Westphalia, Saxony, Bavaria, Wurtemberg, the grand duchies of Frankfort, Berg, Baden, Hesse, and Wurzburg, were under the protection of Napoleon; a similar position was held by the kingdoms of Italy and Naples, by Illyria and the graud duchy of Warsaw; and French influence was paramount in Switzerland, Prussia, Austria, and Denmark. England and Russia were the only truly independent states of real political importance; Spain and Portugal were fighting for their existence; and Sweden on the one hand, and Turkey on the other, were practically outside of Europe.

At the great monarchical congress of Vienna, an attempt was made to restore nearly everything that the Revolution had undone. Austria recovered East Galicia from Russia, and Tyrol and Salzburg from Bavaria; and in compensation for Belgium, &c., she obtained the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom of Italy, as well as Dalmatia and Parma. Λ kingdom of the Netherlands was constructed out of Belgium, Holland, and the German duchy of Luxembourg. The kingdom of Sardinia was restored to Victor Emmanuel and strengthened by the addition of Genoa; and Modena and Tuscany were assigned the one to Duke Francis IV. and the other to Ferdinand the brother of the Austrian emperor. Naples and Sicily, as the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, were given back to the former king Ferdinand; Spain and Portugal to Ferdinand VII. and the house of Braganza respectively. Russia incorporated Finland, Bessarabia, part of Moldavia, Ac.; the kingdom of Poland was governed under Russian suzerainty by a vice-king, with a free constitution; Cracow was declared a free state under the protection of Austria, Russia, and Prussia. Switzerland was allowed to retain its federative system, and its neutrality was guaranteed. Prussia not only got what she had lost by the peace of Tilsit, but received a part of Poland, including Dantzic and Posen, the half of the kingdom of Saxony, and a flourishing territory on the middle and lower Rhine; Bavaria obtained the Palatinate of the Rhine; and Hanover, augmented by East 1 risia, was made a kingdom. The restoration of a German empire being rendered impracticable by the particularist tendencies of several of the larger states, a German confederation, or Deutsches Bund, was substituted, under the presidency of Francis of Austria and his successors. The diet of this confederation had its seat at Frankfort-on-the-Maine, and consisted of the representatives of no fewer than 38 sovereign states, which, besides the German dominion of Austria, included the five kingdoms of Prussia, Bavaria, Hanover, Saxony, and ⅛Viirtemberg, the electoral principality of Hesse-Cassel, seven grand-duchies, nine duchies, ten prin cipalities, the landgravate of Hesse-Homburg, and the four free cities, Frankfort, Hamburg, Bremen, and Lübeck. England obtained possession of Malta in the Mediterranean and of Heligoland off the Danish coast; and the Ionian islands were placed under an English protectorate.

And now a new glacial period of absolutism threatened to invade Europe. Alexander of Russia, Frederick William of Prussia, and Francis of Austria united in a Holy Alliance, which, based, perhaps honestly enough, on the noblest humanitarian professions, proved practically an association for the strict preservation of the royal prerogative against the encroachments of the people. The promise of constitutional government made by many of the sovereigns to their subjects was forgotten or ignored, and even when a constitution was granted it was not unfrequently another form of despotic machinery. The Bourbons bourbonized in France and Spain, and the policy of Metternich was dominant in Austria and Italy. The pope did his best to restore the supremacy of the clergy by concordats with the several states of Catholic Europe; the Jesuits were re-established, and soon recovered a large part of their influence; and even the Knights of St Johu were called back to a futile existence.

But the principles of the Revolution were not dead; they only slumbered, and before long they gave signs of awaking. Neither the political distribution of the European territory established by the Congress of Vienna, nor the political doctrines which mainly conditioned the distribution, were destined to endure. The July revolution in France (1830), which drove out Charles X. and introduced the constitutional government of Louis Philippe, was a signal of change. In the same year the independence of Greece was permanently secured, after the treaty of Adrianople had closed the Russo-Turkish war; and the separation of Belgium from Holland was recognized by the five great powers in the London conference. A great struggle for national existence burst out in Poland—only, however, to end in its complete incorporation with Russia. By 1848 constitutionalism had made no small progress; Russia, Austria, and Prussia were, indeed, as absolutist as ever, but, besides England, France, and Switzerland, Spain and Portugal, Holland and Belgium, Norway and Sweden, Denmark, Greece, and the greater number of the minor German states had all attained a certain amount of political freedom. In Germany, Duke Charles Augustus of Saxe-Weimar had given his subjects a constitution as early as 1816; Nassau, Bavaria, and Baden followed the example in 1818; and after violent disturbances the people of Würtemberg secured the same privileges. If the July revolution of 1830 had been potent, much more poteut was the more radical revolution of February 1848. The storm swept over the Continent, and when it had ceased the political aspect of Europe had changed. By the dreadful “Days of March,” the king of Prussia, Frederick William IV., was forced to become a “constitutional king,” and a national assembly was soon after instituted. In Austria, Metternich had to flee for his life, and Ferdinand was constrained to submit to the demands of the Liberals. In Italy, Rome expelled the pope and declared itself a republic; Sicily expelled the Bourbons and chose the duke of Genoa as their king; and the northern states rose against Austrian domination. A reaction, however, soon again set in. France passed from a republican to a strongly monarchical government; the Prussian king cancelled his constitution and issued another in its stead; Austria was successful in putting down the Hungarian and Bohemian patriots and inflicting a terrible revenge; and Italy saw the defeat of the army of Charles Albert, and had to submit again to Austrian despotism in Lombardy, papal despotism in Rome, and Bourbon despotism in Sicily and Naples. 1 he hope of a real German unity based on constitutional principles, which had been raised by the great Frankfort parliament, died away; Austria was still in the ascendant, and under her countenance and support all liberal movements were violently suppressed in the south German states. The first great disturbance of the sullen and sultry peace which settled down over Europe was occasioned by the claim of Russia to the protectorate of the Greek Christians in the Turkish empire, and her invasion of the Danubian principalities. England and France determined to maintain the integrity of Turkey, and the Crimean war was the result. By the treaty of Paris, which closed the contest (March 1856), Russia ceded a small piece of territory to the north of the Danube, the navigation of the river was declared free, Moldavia and Wallachia were increased by the addition of the Russian surrender and placed along with Servia under the protection of the contracting powers, and the neutrality of the Black Sea was established. The real power of Turkey was hardly increased; and in 1859 she had to utter useless protests against the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, which united into one under the name of Roumania, and chose Alexander Cusa, a Moldavian nobleman, as their chief. The Italian kingdom of Sardinia, which had joined in the Crimean war as an ally of England and France, was soon to play a much more brilliant part in Europe. With the powerful assistance of France it drove Austria out of Lombardy, and practically secured the leadership among the states of Italy. In 1860 the first Italian parliament contained representatives, not only of Sardinia and Lombardy, but also of Tuscany, Modena, Parma, and the Roman Legations, all these states having voted by general suffrage to cast in their lot with Sardinia. The same year saw the marvellous campaigns of Garibaldi; and on the 17th March 1861 Victor Emmanuel was recognized as king of Italy by all the Italian states except Austrian Venetia and the city of Rome. In 1864 another important alteration of political boundaries was effected in the north. The provinces of Schleswig-Holstein, occupied by a partly Danish and partly German population, were conquered by the united forces of the German confederation. Before long it was evident that Prussia meant to appropriate them to herself as of great service to the development of her marine. By the Gastein convention of 1865 it was arranged that the government of Schleswig should fall to Prussia and that of Holstein to Austria, while Lauenburg was yielded to Prussia for 2⅜ millions of Danish rixdollars. This treaty, however, proved only a very temporary settlement,—the real question at issue being whether Prussia or Austria was to be the dominant power in Germany. The diet, which, according to the treaty of Vienna, ought to have been arbiter between them, was too weak to give effect to any decision: it sided with Austria, and mobilized its army by the decree of 14th July. By 3d July 1866 the fate of Germany was decided by the battle of Königgrätz or Sadowa, and on the 23d of August the treaty of Prague was signed. The Austrians ceded the Venetian territory to the Italians (who had naturally seized the opportunity of the war), gave up their claim to Schleswig-Holstein, and promised to recognize the German confederation and any territorial changes effected within its limits. In 1866-67 the confederation was constituted, under the direction of Prussia, to include all the German states to the north of the Maine; they were to have one common federal legislation and a federal army, while in everything Prussia was to have the pre-eminence. The duchy of Luxembourg in the same years threatened to involve Europe in a new war, as Prussia refused to permit its transfer by the king of Holland to the French emperor; but peace was secured by a conference of the great powers in London (May 1867), who guaranteed the neutrality of the territory and secured the dismantling of its fortresses.

Another step in the unification of Germany was taken iu 1868 by the reconstruction of the Zollverein or customs union. Meanwhile Austria had been turning her attention to her domestic difficulties, and had settled the most important by the recognition of the autonomy of Hungary, which was henceforth to be associated with Austria proper on equal terms. In June 1867 Francis Joseph and his consort were formally crowned at Pesth as king and queen of Hungary. The year 1870 saw the completion of Italian unity by the occupation and annexation of the city of Rome, and, what was of still greater consequence to Europe at large, the rise of a dispute between France and Prussia about the succession to the throne of Spain. The matter was of little real moment to either, but the French Government was eager for the fray, and Prussia was not slow to take up the gage. If the strength of the two combatants be considered, the terrible conflict was soon over. The German troops, who had crossed the frontier in August 1870, entered Paris in March 1871; the preliminary peace had been signed at Versailles in February; and the final peace was concluded 10th May. Prussia’s position in Germany and Europe was established, and her king had been recognized as emperor of the German confederation on 18th June, in the palace of Versailles. Europe again enjoyed peace for a few years; but in 1877Russia declared war against Turkey, ostensibly as protector of the Christian populations who were suffering from the anarchy of her government. In Europe and Armenia the conflict continued with growing success on the part of the Russians till the preliminary peace of San Stefano. The alterations demanded by Russia were of the most sweeping kind, and would practically have removed Turkey from the rank of a European power, as the territory to be left under her control was both of small extent and discontinuous. The conclusion of the treaty on such conditions was strongly opposed by the British Government, and for a time it almost appeared as if Europe were to be involved in a far more terrible war than that which had come to a close. After much political finessing it was at length decided that the matter in dispute should be submitted to an international congress, and the plenipotentiaries of the various powers accordingly met at Berlin on Thursday, 13th June 1878.

Such in the most meagre outline are the principal changes in the political distribution of the territory of Europe. A clearer idea of the rise of the several powers of the present time may be obtained from the following equally rapid survey.

Great Britain began in the little Saxon kingdom of Wessex, which, according to the usual account, dates from Cerdic’s settlement in 519 a.d., and by 880 had extended its authority as far north as the Forth and Clyde. The remoter portions of this territory afterwards gravitated now to England and now to Scotland, till at last the boundaries between the two kingdoms became what they still remain. Wales was subjugated by Edward I. in 1282; and the conquest of Ireland, begun in 1169 under Henry IL, was completed by 1610. The English and Scottish crowns were united on the accession of James of Scotland to the English throne in 1603, and the two countries became politically one by the Act of Union in 1707. The representation of Ireland in the English parliament dates only from 1801.

France practically had its commencement when Hugh Capet united the duchy of Francia with the minor territories still left in the hands of the petty Carolingian kings, and established the capital at Paris. Its subsequent growth was very gradual, and the successive additions were obtained partly by conquest, partly by purchase, and partly by matrimonial alliances. Philip I. bought the duchy of Berri; Philip Augustus secured possession of Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and Poitou, and of Normandy, Vermandois, Alençon, Auvergne, and Evreux; St Louis obliged the count of Toulouse not only to give up part of his territory, but also to recognize the reversionary rights of the crown; Philip IV. added the countship of Lyonnais, and John incorporated Champagne and Brie. With the accession of the house of Valois the duchy of that name naturally became part of the royal domain, and shortly afterwards Dauphiné was obtained from the childless Hubert II. The long English wars interrupted the advance and dismembered the kingdom, and it was not till 1450 that the king of France was again in possession of his full inheritance. In 1477 the great duchy of Burgundy was incorporated with the-croavn: Provence, the Boulonnais, and Picardy were all acquired in 1481; and in 1488 the death of the last duke of Brittany paved the way for the incorporation of his duchy. Henry IV. brought part of Navarre, Bearn, and Foix; Louis XIII. united Artois with the crown; and Louis XIV. secured not only the greater part of Alsace, but also French Flanders, and Franche Comté. Corsica, which had been conquered from Genoa in 1768, and Avignon and the Venaissin, which had been held by the popes, were incorporated in 1791.

Austria was originally a mark established by Charles the Great for the defence of Bavaria against the Avars. It was made a duchy by Frederick Barbarossa in 1156, and in 1192 was increased by the addition of Styria. The acquisition of Carinthia, Tyrol, and Trieste took place in the 14th century; and in 1453 the duchy was made an archduchy by the emperor Frederick. Dalmatia was gained by the treaty of Cambray in 1508; Hungary, Bohemia, and Silesia, by the marriage of the archduke Ferdinand, the brother of Charles V., with the Hungarian princess in 1526; Galicia and Lodomeria at the partition of Poland in 1772; and Bukovina from Turkey in 1778.

The present German empire dates, as has been seen, only from 1872. Prussia, conquered from the pagan Slavonians by the Teutonic knights of the 13th century, was in 1525 granted by the Polish king Sigismund I. as an hereditary duchy to Albert of Brandenberg, and in 1611 became independent of the Polish crown. In 1701 Duke Frederick was permitted by the emperor to assume the title of king of Prussia; and under his grandson Frederick the Great the territory of the new kingdom was increased by Silesia and large parts of Poland. In 1866 Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Nassau, and Frankfort were annexed.

The battle of Morgarten in 1315 secured the independence of the Forest Cantons of Switzerland; and in 1352 the first real confederation was formed by Schwyz, Uri, Unterwalden, Lucerne, Zurich, Glarus, Zug, and Bern. Aargau or Argovia and Thurgau or Thurgovia were annexed in 1415, and Ticino or Tessin in 1418. Soleure or Solothurn and Freiburg or Fribourg joined the confederacy in 1481, Basel and Schaffhausen in 1501, and Appenzell in 1513; St Gall, Geneva, Neufchatel or Neuenburg, Valais or Wallis, and the Grisons or Graubünden shortly afterwards became associated states; and in 1536 Vaud or Waadt was conquered from the dukes of Savoy.

The kingdom of Spain was formed by the union of Castile and Aragon in 1479. Castile had become a kingdom in 1033, and had successively incorporated Toledo, Leon, and Galicia; and Aragon, which represented the older kingdom of Sobrarve, had gradually got possession of Catalonia and the countship of Barcelona, Valencia, Majorca, Minorca, and Iviça. The conquest of Granada in 1492 and of Navarre in 1512 completed the territorial extension. Portugal, which has more than once been incorporated with Spain, was erected into a kingdom in 1139.

lhe beginnings of the Russian empire are usually traced to a body of Scandinavian adventurers in the 9th century, but the real commencement of the present monarchy is the grand duchy of Moscow, which, in the 14th century, under Ivan Kalita, began to be paramount among the various Russian principalities. During the next 200 years these were gradually subdued, the last and greatest of all, Novgorod, being incorporated in 1478. In 1654 the chief of the Zaporogian Cossacks recognized the Russian supremacy, and Smolensk and part of White Russia were annexed. In 1721 Livonia, Esthonia, Ingermanland, and part of Finland were ceded by Sweden; in 1742 another part of Finland was added; in 1772 the northern and eastern portions of White Russia, and in 1774 Azoff, Kertch, Yenikale, and Kinburn. The whole of the Crimea was incorporated in 1783, and ten years after, Volhynia, Podolia, and the government of Minsk. The year 1795 saw the annexation of Lithuania, Courland, and Samogitia, and the first decade of the 19th century the successive incorporation of Georgia, Mingrelia, and the remainder of Finland. Imeritia was added in 1810, Bessarabia in 1812, and the duchy of Warsaw in 1815; and the conquest of the Caucasian region was completed in 1859-1864.

The Scandinavian kingdoms date from the 8th and 9th centuries; and their territory has been at various periods very differently distributed among themselves. An amalgamation was effected by the union of Calmar in 1397, and lasted till 1524. The present union of Norway and Sweden dates from the treaty of Kiel in 1814.

To no man, however vast his experience and varied his sympathies, is it granted to form even an approximate estimate of all the multitudinous forces that are at work within the limits of a single country, and still less is it possible to form such an estimate if the field of observation include the heterogeneous activities of such an area as Europe. The local current is apt to be taken for the general, and the recoil of the wave for the retreat of the tide. Still there are movements and tendencies which force themselves on the notice of even the superficial observer, about whose present potency there can be no question, whatever antagonistic tendencies may be secretly gathering strength below the surface or in the remoter parts of the area. Of several of these mention more or less distinct has already been made, but it may be well to attempt a more systematic survey.

We have seen that nationalism is powerfully at work; the tendency to give practical application in the political domain to the principle familiarity expressed in the phrase se ressemble s'assemble, birds of a feather flock together. The so-called nations of Europe are still in painful process of formation,—some in one stage and some in another, but all without exception very imperfectly organized. As a mere vocable the word nation is old enough, but the thought which it now vaguely expresses is a thought that men are but beginning to think. Europe has had its tribes and its kingdoms, its village-communities, its cities, its Achaean leagues, its Hanseatic confederations, its republics, its empires; it is only developing its nations. Hence iu part the difficulty of attaining a satisfactory definition of nationality; and hence the endless collisions and confusions that arise in the practical application of the principle. If all people of the same blood spoke the same language, held the same religion, and occupied continuous territory, the whole question would be solved. But, as has been seen, this is as far as possible from being the case in Europe; and neither blood, nor language, nor religion, nor continuity of territory can be accepted as master of the practical arrangement. The principle of nationalism has consequently to work by compromise. It sometimes appears as a restorative and conservative, sometimes as an innovating and creative force; and any attempt to insist that it shall be exclusively this or that is certain to be abortive.

Here it is on the side of the weak and oppressed, and seems humane and benign; there on the side of the strong and despotic, and seems stern and cruel. In spite of all difficulties and opposition it is making rapid progress, and is likely to be a powerful factor in Europe for generations to come,—building up political unities, rehabilitating decadent languages, and calling new literatures into life. Greece and Italy, Belgium and Bohemia, Hungary and Roumania, are testimonies of its power in the past decades of the century: who will say what it will have accomplished before the century is done?

As a natural complement of nationalism we have internationalism, which in certain aspects may be regarded as a stage in the progress to cosmopolitanism. Just in proportion as the various nations develop and recognize their national individuality they become conscious of their true relations to each other, and find the necessity of regulating their mutual intercourse and common activity; isolation is impossible. Reciprocity must increase with the capacities and desiree of each: there are many things which can be attained only by concerted action or division of labour. The tendency of internationalism is displayed in the .purely political domain by the growth of international law, and the gradual endeavours after a system by which international disputes may be settled by arbitration and discussion rather than by armaments and devastation. That it will end before long in something like a confederation of European states the optimist believes and the philanthropist hopes. Every European congress familiarizes the idea and establishes the habit. In the social domain the tendency is equally potent. Facilities of travel and accumulation of wealth are annually leading a greater proportion of the citizens of one country to make personal acquaintance with the citizens of another. Ignorance and bigotry are naturally lessened, though there are indeed an ignorance and a bigotry which return from abroad only more ignorant and bigoted than before. It needs no special insight to recognize the importance to the great progress of the world of such an innovation as the railway; but it would require more than human grasp of intellect to estimate the enormous extent and complexity of its influence. It is the one touch of art which will make the whole world kin. As a mighty upheaval lifts an archipelago of islands into a continent, so is this one power heaving Europe into unity. The movement is perhaps most noticeable in matters of little intrinsic importance as in the gradual dying out of national and provincial costumes before the invasions of Parisian taste: but to the philanthropist nothing can be uninteresting that either indicates or accelerates the advance. In literature and art we have a still more important development of internationalism; for it was in this domain that it first made itself powerfully felt.. Though Spain, France, England, Germany, and Holland have each given birth to distinct schools of painting, the influence of Italy has been paramount from the beginning; and though the literatures of the several countries are distinguished from each other by much that is characteristically local and national, they have all been based more or less directly on the classical work of Greece and Rome, and undergone continual modifications from their mutual interaction. It is hard to conceive what would have been the progress of English literature apart from the influence of Dante and Boccaccio, or, in later times, the progress of French literature if Voltaire and his contemporaries had received no inspiration from this side the Channel. To write the history of any literature is impossible if no account is taken of its foreign indebtedness. This mutual interaction is rapidly increasing, and in spite of the recent additions to the number of distinct literary areas, it is imprinting more and more of a common character on the whole. The novels of a Scott or the poems of a Byron sweep over the Continent, and come back in manifold reverberations from Germany and France, from Sweden and Spain. If the phrase the republic of letters is appropriate, still more appropriate is the republic of science; if literature is becoming international, science is international However bitter the jealousies that may separate France and Germany, the French savant watches eagerly for the work of his German compeer, and the German cannot afford to disdain the contributions of the Frenchman. International congresses of the representatives of particular departments of research are becoming mere matters of course; a meteorological congress met at Vienna in 1868, a health congress at Brussels in 1877. An association ultimately joined by nearly all the Continental nations was formed at Berlin in 1866 to determine the meridian between Palermo and Christiania, and thus furnish a standard unit for Europe; and in 1877 a geographical congress for the exploration of Africa was opened under the presidency of the king of the Belgians. How necessary such co-operation really is is shown by the loss that science has already sustained from the existence of different methods of registration and observation: the labour of years has not unfrequently been rendered utterly useless to the general progress by the employment of incommensurable systems. Considerable advances have happily been made towards the universal adoption of the same metrical and monetary standards. The French system of weights and measures was introduced into the Netherlands in 1820, into Spain in 1859, into Portugal in 1868, into Germany in 1872, and into Roumania in 1876. In 1881 it will become obligatory in Norway and Sweden. A monetary league, by which they agreed to perfect reciprocity of currency, was formed in 1865 by France, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland, and they were joined by Greece in 1875, and by Roumania in 1876. Uniformity of coinage was established throughout the German empire in 1872, and in 1875 the Scandinavian states agreed to adopt a common system. In 1874 a postal union was constituted by a convention at Bern between Austria-Hungary, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Roumania, Russia, Servia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey; and this has been followed by a similar telegraphic union.

A third tendency fostered by the same conditions as internationalism is w hat is known as religious and political toleration. The name is an unhappy one, as it implies the mutual obnoxiousness of the various religious and political parties, but the time has hardly come when it can be considered a misnomer; the foremost countries of Europe are still far from having attained the full enjoyment of that intellectual liberty which formed the ideal of a Milton, a De Tocqueville, or a Stuart Mill. Thanks, indeed, to the influence of the French Revolution, rapid progress has been made during the present century, and the severer forms of persecution have fallen decidedly out of fashion. The Jews are the most notable monument of the change. Their history for centuries was full of blood and tears; they were despised and rejected; their very name was a byword and reproach. The 19th century has seen them gradually admitted to all the rights of citizens in the most flourishing countries of the continent, guiding the destinies of nations and mingling their blood with the proudest nobilities. In the more backward and conservative countries they still labour under many disadvantages: from Norway and Russia Proper they are excluded by law, and in Portugal and Spain they are emphatically aliens. The same number of Dr Lehmann’s Per Israelite one of the organs of the orthodox party, reports that Roumania is preparing a law for the civic and political equalization of the native Jews, and that in Bulgaria the hatred against the Jews is so great that, on the evacuation of Rustchuk by the Turks, the Bulgarians sent a deputation requesting the Russian commander to expel the whole Jewish community and to plunder their shops. The liberal movement of Roumania was dictated partly by a desire to obtain the sympathy of Western Europe; for until recently persecution of the Jews was carried on as vigorously there as in the neighbouring countries. Between Roman Catholics and Protestants the ancient feud has lost some of its bitterness. In Scotland and Eugland the legal emancipation of the Catholics in 1829 has been followed by social changes of great importance, the extent of which may be estimated by the little opposition which was offered to the restoration of the Roman Catholic hierarchy in Scotland in 1878. In Prussia and throughout the German empire there has been a recrudescence of animosity between the confessions; but it is to be observed that the contest is rather between the state and a political party than between the Catholics as Catholics and the Protestants as Protestants. In fact, it is only part of a wider contest which is being fought under varying forms throughout the greater part of Europe, as to whether the state or the church is to be the dominant power. Many of the measures which the Government has adopted have certainly led to what is practically religious persecution; but this persecution is totally different in its character from the persecutions of the Huguenots in the 17th century. The most extreme exertions of power have been the suppression of religious communities, the removal and appointment of priests and bishops by the civil authorities, the prohibition of religious processions, and in 1876 the closing of all Catholic schools and the assertion of complete state control over all church property. In Switzerland the movement was similar; the Old Catholic party was recognized by the state in 1875, and the cathedrals of Bern and Geneva handed over to its clergy. In Belgium the Liberal and Protestant minority have excited violent disturbances in several cities, as Ghent and Brussels, and the social fermentation has been carried to dangerous extremes; but by the constitution there is full religious liberty, all the churches are subsidized by the Government, and by a curious anomaly the heaviest subsidy is paid to the weakest denomination. The relations established between Italy and the pope, by the absolute irreconcilability of their territorial claims, has naturally led the Italian Government to adopt a strongly anti-ecclesiastical policy: the state religion is Roman Catholicism, but the suppression of monasteries has been vigorously carried out, and religious processions outside of the churches can only take place by special permission of the prefects. The constitution sanctions full religious liberty. In France Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Jews all receive grants from the public treasury. The Russian Government exercises its authority in favour of the Greek church in a way that frequently infringes on the liberties of other religionists, and no secession can take place from the pale of the establishment; but at the same time the profession of any creed is legally allowed. Spain, by the last of her many revolutions, has taken a step backwards: private worship is still permitted to non-Catholic religions, and foreigners are considered inviolable, but all public manifestations, by printed notices, emblems, or otherwise, are strictly prohibited.

It has Happily become impossible for even the most retrograde of nations to recall the days of the Inquisition,—a fact that is at least partly due to the influence of another great movement, which may be distinguished as humanitarianism. This movement is evident in so manÿ departments of thought and action, here introducing a less painful process of killing into the slaughter-house, and there affecting the decision of questions of speculative theology, that only a few suggestive facts need be mentioned. The penal codes of all European nations have been cleared of most of their mediaeval barbarism; and the infliction of direct physical suffering is reserved for the more brutal class of criminals. Instruments of torture are mere antiquarian curiosities. The punishment of death, once the common penalty for trivial and heinous offences, already appears to many minds .as altogether inhuman, and has been completely abolished or discontinued in Holland, Belgium, Portugal, Switzerland, and Roumania. The bill for its abolition in Italy in 1875 was lost by 73 to 36, and the district of Tuscany, which had adopted the abolition about twenty years before, was forced to conform to the general law. In 1876, however, the committee for the revision of the penal code unanimously voted for the abolition. The introduction of private instead of public executions is a step in the same direction, though like many other partial measures it may delay the complete disuse of capital punishment, Mention may also be made of the amelioration of prison discipline, of the magnificent progress in the treatment of the insane which has been effected by the philanthropists of the last two generations, of the enormous increase which has taken place in the number of our hospitals, asylums, and benevolent institutions, and of the growing attention that is paid to relief of the sufferings of the lower animals. Whatever be the wisdom of the measure, the law of 1876 in England in regard to vivisection speaks volumes for the advance of the humanitarian movement. In this respect as in others the various European nations are in very different stages: while the English magistrate is fining a collier or carter for lending his countenance to a cockfight, the Spanish magistrate is applauding the exploits of a picador or matador. That we are approximating to a unity of sentiment is shown among other things by the support which has been given to the Geneva convention for the mitigation of the sufferings of the wounded in war, which w as formed in 1864 by the representatives of Baden, Belgium, Denmark, France, Hesse, Italy, the Netherlands, Prussia, Switzerland, and Wiirtemberg, and which has since obtained the adhesion of Greece, Great Britain, and Turkey. (∏∙ A. w.)

Animals, 693; domestic, 696.

Birds, 694.

Botany, 690.

Boundaries, 681.

Canals, 710.

Charlemagne, empire of (with map), 714.

Cities, population of, 705.

Climate, 689.

Coast-line, 681.

Commerce, 707.

Countries, table of, 703.

Crusades, period of (with map), 715.

Cultivated plants, 691.

Debts, national, 706.

Domestic animals, 696.

Earthquakes, 683.

Index.

Education, 710.

Ethnology, 697.

Extent, 681.

Fishes, 695.

Forests, 692.

Geological formations, 687.

Highlands and lowlands ratio of, 683. Humanitarianism, 720.

Industries, 707.

Insects, 695.

Internationalism, 719.

Lakes, 687.

Land and sea, changes of 6S2.

Languages, 699.

Mammals. 693.

Manufactures, 707

Metals, 688.

Military forces, 705.

Minerals, 688.

Mountains, 684.

National debts, 706.

Nationalism, 718.

Naval forces, 706.

Plants, cultivated. 691

Political divisions. 702; historical changes in, 713 7 Is.

Population, 704.

Races, 697.

Railways, 709.

Rainfall, 689.

Relief, 683.

Religion, 712

Reptiles, 695.

Rivers, 685; table oi. 686.

Roman empire (with map), 7f3.

Sea and land, changes of, C82. sexes, proportions of, 704.

Shipping, commercial, 707.

Snow-line, 690.

Telegraphs, 709.

Tendencies, general, 718.

Territorial distribution, changes of, 713-718.

Toleration, 719.

Universities, 711.

Volcanoes, 6S3.

winds, 690.

Zoology, 693.