NATURAL HISTORY. 53 



selves ^ and those of Terra del Fuego, from the south- 

 ern continent. If fewer of them are found in the 

 northern coasts of Lapland than in those of Siheria and 

 Waigat's straits, it is hecause all the Lapland rivers 

 fall into the gulph of Bothnia, and none of them into 

 the North Sea. 



The ocean surrounds the whole globe without any 

 interruption of continuity, and the tour of the globe 

 may be made by passing the point of South America, 

 but it is not yet known whether the ocean surrounds 

 the northern part of the globe in like manner ; and 

 all mariners who have attempted to sail from Europe 

 to China by the north-east or north-west, have equal- 

 ly miscarried in their enterprises. 



The seas which are called Mediterranean, are pro- 

 perly branches from the great ocean, by which they 

 are supplied. Lakes differ from the Mediterranean 

 seas, because they do not receive any water from the 

 ocean ; for, on the contrary, if they have communi- 

 cation with the seas, they furnish them with water ; 

 thus the Black Sea, which some geographers have re- 

 garded as connected with the Mediterranean, and con- 

 sequently as an appendix of the ocean, is only a lake, 

 because, instead of receiving water from the Mediter- 

 ranean, it supplies it with some, and flows with ra- 

 pidity through the Bosphorus into the lake called the 

 sea of Marmora, and thence through the strait of the 

 Dardanelles into the Grecian Sea. The water of the 

 Black Sea is less clear, and much less saline than that 

 of the ocean. No island is to be met with in this sea: 

 tempests are very violent here, and more dangerous 

 than in the ocean ; because the whole body of the 

 waters being contained in a bason, which may be said 

 to have no outlet, they have a kind of whirling motion 



