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SCENERY OF SWITZERLAND. 
CHAPTER IX. 
LAKES. 
The Alps are surrounded by a beautiful circle of 
lakes. We have on the north, besides many smaller 
ones, those of Constance, Walen and Ztirich, Zug, 
Lucerne, Brienz and Thun, Geneva; on the south 
the Lago Maggiore, Lugano, Como, Iseo, and Garda, 
all seeming to radiate as it were from the great 
central mass of the St. Gotthard. I do not mention 
the Lakes of Neuchatel or Morat, because they be- 
long to a different category. 
These great lakes are clearly not parts of a former 
inland sea. They stand at very different levels. The 
Lake of Brienz, for instance, is 190 metres above 
that of Geneva; that of Orta is 225 metres above the 
Lake of Garda. 
But in considering the origin of these lakes we 
must have regard not merely to the surface level of 
the water, but also that of the bottom. When we 
give the level of a lake it is usual to quote that of 
the upper surface, but the bottom is perhaps even 
