BEVIEWS — MODERN GEOGRAPHY. 465 



the South of France ; and Canada as from the middle of England 

 to the middle of Spain. 



In like manner the sizes of all countries are measured by the 

 British Isles, either n whole or in part : a very definite idea of the 

 sizss of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, having been pre- 

 viously given. The direct distances from London of all the 

 capitals in the world add another concise and practical feature : e. g. 

 St. John's, Newfoundland, 2,300 miles S. "W. of London ; Montreal, 

 3,250 miles S. "W., &c. The principal seas of Enrope are measured 

 by the like standard ; and the relative size of British Colonies and 

 Foreign possessions are brought out by similar comparisons. Thus 

 New Zealand is described as about the size of Britain ; Ceylon is 

 stated to correspond very nearly to that of Scotland ; and British 

 America, embracing the Hudson Bay Territory, as having an ai'ea 

 equal to a square of 1,600 miles : more than three-fifths the size of 

 Europe ; Canada, with an area of 400,000 square miles, eaual to a 

 square of 632 miles, or four and a half times larger than Great 

 Britain, &c. So also minuter subdivisions find a similar treatment. 

 Thus all the counties of England are measured by the size of Mid- 

 dlesex, and practically the same comparison suffices for the whole 

 British Isles : the counties of Edinburgh and Dublin being so nearly 

 of the same size with the Metropolitan County of England, as to avert 

 all risk of arousing Scottish or Irish jealousies by any undue pre- 

 eminence being given to the ancient area of the Middle Saxons of 

 England. 



These are only a few of the peculiar and novel features of the 

 work. In others, countries, and their districts and counties, are 

 classed according to their river basins. The rivers, again, are 

 grouped under the oceans and seas of which they are tribu- 

 taries ; the towns according to certain proximate ratios of popu- 

 lation ; and in many other ways intelligent aids to memory are 

 substituted for the old unreasoning and laborions method of learn- 

 ing by rote. 



When we consider the fashion in which such American School 

 Book manufacturers as Morse or Mitchell convert a geographical 

 manual into a Yankee penny trumpet for the glorification of that 

 one great nation of the uni.erse, and the strong anti-British feeling 

 which so frequently accompanies such fanfaronade, the practical and 

 altogether unboastful British character of this usefnl school book, 

 ought to commend it for general adoption in Canada, as ia other 

 parts of the British Empire. 



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