PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY. 



hollows in which lakes and seas are spread out be 

 shallow their waters must extend over a greater 

 superficial space; and if these hollows be deep, 

 the waters will occupy less extensive areas. The 

 operation of this principle should be borne in 

 mind ; for, if the inequalities of the land were 

 generally less, the waters would occupy larger 

 spaces, and this more extended area of shallow 

 water would act in various ways. It would render 



the climate more genial and uniform ; and, extend- 

 ing a greater surface to the evaporating power of 

 the sun, rains and-atmospheric moisture would be 

 more prevalent. These, again, would influence 

 the amount and kind of animal and vegetable life 

 on dry land ; while the shallow waters themselves 

 would be more productive of life it being a well- 

 known fact that marine plants and animals nourish 

 only at limited depths. 



The proportion of dry land to water, as at pres- 

 ent known, is about one to three that is, nearly 

 three-fourths of the whole surface of the globe may 

 be assigned to water. Reckoning the entire area 

 of the globe at 197 million square miles, the land 

 is computed to occupy about 52 millions, leaving 

 145 millions for sea. The land is far from equally 

 distributed over the globe ; the greater part of it 

 lies north of the equator. ' If,' says Professor 

 Ansted, ' a person, stationed vertically over the 

 town of Falmouth in England, could see half the 

 globe, he would see more than 49 out of the 52 

 millions of square miles of land, or about an equal 

 surface of land and water. If, however, he were 

 perched equally high above New Zealand, he 

 would see 96^ millions of square miles of water, 

 and less than two millions of square miles of land.' 

 To render this unsymmetrical protuberance of the 

 land consistent with the right balancing of the 

 globe, it has been assumed that the rocks in the 

 water hemisphere may be heavier than those in the 

 other, arising either from their containing more 

 metal or being more compact. 



CONTINENTS AND ISLANDS. 



The continuous masses of land large enough to 

 deserve the name of continents are only three in 

 number the Eastern Continent, or Old World ; the 

 Western Continent, or New World ; and the South- 

 ern Continent, or Australia. By much the largest is 

 the Eastern Continent ; Europe, Asia, and Africa 

 are, strictly speaking, not separate continents, but 

 divisions or lobes of this vast tract North and 

 South America, in like manner, are the two 



divisions of the Western Continent The areas of 

 the three continents, with the adjacent islands, in 

 round numbers of millions of miles, are as follows : 



Old World, or Eastern Continent 31,930,000 



Europe 3,724,000 



Asia 16, 152,000 



Africa 11,354,000 



New World, or Western Continent 15,000,000 



North America 8,200,000 



South America 6,800,000 



Southern Continent, or Australia 4,633,000 



The outline and disposition of the three conti- 

 nents are as diverse as can well be conceived. 

 The great mass of the Old World lies north of the 

 equator, with its main axis ranging from north- 

 east to south-west. The western continent runs, 

 in its longest direction, nearly from north to south, 

 and has considerably more of its area, in propor- 

 tion, to the south of the equator than is the case 

 in the other continent Australia, again, is wholly 

 in the southern hemisphere, has its greatest length 

 from east to west, and is of a compact oblong 

 shape, while the other two continents are exces- 

 sively irregular and deeply indented. The Old 

 and New Worlds agree in one remarkable circum- 

 stance; nearly all the projecting portions point 

 southwards, and are mostly of a triangular shape. 

 This is seen, in the Old World, in Kamtchatka, 

 Corea, Malacca, Hindustan, Arabia, Southern 

 Africa, Italy, Greece, Spain, Scandinavia; and in 

 the New, in Greenland, Alaska, California, Florida, 

 and South America. Retaining the generally 

 acknowledged divisions, let us glance at their 

 respective positions and superficial characteristics 

 as influencing the vitality of our planet 



Europe lying almost wholly within the northern 



