A UNIVERSAL GEOGRAPHY. 



THE BRITISH ISLES. 



CHAPTER I. 



General Features. 



REAT BRITAIN and Ireland, together with the numerous small 

 contiguous islands, form but an insignificant fraction of that world 

 upon which they have exercised so considerable an influence. In 

 area they do not form the thirtieth part of Europe, or the four 

 hundred and thirtieth of the habitable globe, whilst their truly 

 fruitful portion, which has enabled England to play her great part in the world's 

 history, constitutes scarcely more than one-half of the United Kingdom.* 



Great Britain, the larger of the two main islands of the group, is separated 

 from Continental Europe by the English Channel and the North Sea, and is itself 

 divided into several well-marked geographical regions. Ranges of hills, and even 

 mountains, no less than the elongated shape of the island, were favourable to the 

 formation of distinct communities, whose conflicting interests, as might have been 

 expected, were frequently decided by an appeal to arms. South-eastern England, 

 a country of plains and hills, is one of these natural regions, and for ages its inha- 

 bitants differed from their neighbours in history and manners. The peninsula of 

 Cornwall, between the English and Bristol Channels, which juts out into the open 

 Atlantic, no less than the mountain land of Wales, bounded on the south and north 



Area. 



Great Britain 84,447 



931 Minor contiguous Islands . . , . 4,614 



Isle of Man 227 



Ireland 32,285 



196 Minor contiguous Islands .... 246 



Total British Islands . . . . 121,819 

 107 



Population 



(Estimated for 18 



28,630,000 



300,000 



56,000 



5,370,000 



6,000 



34,361,000 



