leave the beautiful scenery of its birth, to be swallowed up in the great wide sea.

The mouth of a river is that part where the waters are discharged into the ocean, and here it frequently divides into several branches, or spreads out to a greater extent. Thus the Thames, which at London Bridge is not above 700 feet wide, is at the Nore, where it meets the sea, six miles wide.

Some rivers overflow their banks at certain seasons, or periods; this is the case with the Nile. Such overflows are caused by the yearly melting of the snows, or the fall of large quantities of rain, perhaps hundreds of miles away from the land where the inundation, as it is called, takes place. In hot, dry countries, like Egypt, this turning the rice and corn fields into lakes for a time, is looked for, and hailed as a great blessing, as indeed it is; the earth is moistened and enriched by the deposit left when the waters retire, and the grain springs up and ripens in a wonderfully short space of time.

But there are also occasional inundations, which cannot be foreseen or guarded against, and which do immense mischief, destroying both life and property to a lamentable extent.

Tidal rivers are those which are influenced by the flowing and ebbing of the tide of the sea into which they empty themselves; in the Amazon, in South America, this is said to be the case at a distance of 500 miles from the mouth. Most rivers are navigable, that is, can be ascended in ships of considerable size, almost as far as the tide flows, some few farther, but many not nearly so far.

Into some rivers the tide, at certain periods, rushes with such violence as to produce what is called a bore, the water lifting itself up like a mighty wave, and rolling in against the current with great force, and a noise like thunder. The Severn, the Trent, and the Wye, are the English rivers in which this takes place; also in the Solway Frith, which runs up between England and Scotland about forty miles, and is more than twenty miles wide at the mouth. Frith or forth is the Scottish name for an estuary, or inlet of the sea; on the western coast of Scotland they would term this a loch; in Denmark and Norway, it would be called a fiord. These terms come from the Latin word fretum, which means a narrow sea between two lands. The word gulf has much the same meaning. Bay is usually applied to a

wider and shallower inlet. A creek is smaller, generally indenting a low coast, or river brink; in North America, this term is often applied to small inland streams. A cove is a small creek or bay; and a haven, or harbour, a place of shelter for ships, it may be of natural formation, or contrived and built by man; very commonly it is in a good natural situation, strengthened and improved by art. If we dig a hole in the sand when the tide is out, it will soon be filled with water, and we shall have a LAKE on a small scale; it may be of any shape, for lakes differ as much in this respect as they do in size. They are sometimes so large that they are called seas; the Caspian Sea, for example, situated between Europe and Asia, has a length of about 900 miles, and an average width of 200 miles; its waters are salt, and so are those of many lakes. The largest European lake, is that of Ladoga, in Russia, containing an area of 6330 square miles. There are many lakes in Great Britain, but they are all comparatively small the largest in Ireland is Lough Neagh; in Scotland, Loch Lomond; in England, Windermere, in the county of Westmoreland. Lough, loch, and mere are different names of the same signification. The word tarn, which

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also means a bay, fen, or marsh, is sometimes applied to a lake, generally of small size, and lying high among mountains.

A lagoon is a kind of lake formed by the encroachment of a sea or large river upon the land; the waters have flowed over into a hollow place, and there remained, kept up to their level by continued contributions in the same way, or through openings in the intervening bank; or it may be a portion of the sea, or river, cut off by a sand-bank, or coral reef, which has formed gradually, and entirely enclosed the space, or left but a small opening at one, or each end, or here and there along the ridge. What is called the Sea of Haarlem, in Holland, is but a vast lagoon. Pools and ponds are mere collections of rain-water in hollow places, which usually dry up in the hot season; this true lakes do not, as they are fed by streams flowing into them, or springs gushing up from the bottom. From lakes, of the latter kind, which often lie very high, some of the largest rivers take their rise; such, for instance, as the Volga, in Russia, which has a course of 1900 miles Some lakes are fed by water making its way through the earth, or by underground passages, from a neighbouring large body of water, as

our supposed hole in the sand is supplied from the sea.

Some lakes are exceedingly deep, never having been fathomed, others are shallow; some have sprung into existence within the memory of man, others are so old that they are supposed by some to be the remains of the great Deluge, when, for the sins of mankind, as we are told in Genesis, chapter vii., God "broke up the fountains of the great deep, and opened all the windows of heaven," so that the whole face of the earth was covered with water, and only the faithful Noah and his family were saved from destruction.

Lakes are great sources of fertility to the countries amid which they are situated; the water drawn up from their surface, or evaporated by the sun, forms clouds, which ascending to the higher regions, where the air is colder, becomes condensed, or turned from vapour into water again, and falls as rain over a wide extent of land. When the poet made the cloud sing

"I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers

From the seas and the streams"

he might have added from the lakes also, for they supply much of the moisture which freshens the plants, and makes the earth productive.