as they scud across from the Atlantic, has her sky almost always overcast, and receives more or less rain on about three days out of every four. Yet with all her rainy days she receives only thirty-six inches in the course of the year, which is far less than the rainfall of the English lakes, and only half as much again as that of London.

7. Lapped by a current of warm water, setting northeastward from the equator, Ireland has a mild as well as damp climate. As warm moisture favours the growth of grass, the constant greenness of her pastures has earned for Ireland the name of the Emerald or the Green Isle. For the ripening of fruit and grain such a climate is less suited. Hence we find little wheat grown in Ireland, and that only in its more favoured parts. The staple foods of the people are oatmeal and potatoes.

CHAPTER XIV.

IRELAND.

Surface.

1. The regular arrangement of the hills in England makes it easy to trace the skeleton of the land, and to follow its main lines of water-parting, and to mark out its three water-sheds. Even in Scotland and Wales, in spite of the difficulties presented by its thick knots of mountains, they are readily found by marking the courses of the rivers.

2. In the lozenge-shaped island of which we are now speaking, the hills are in clusters chiefly at the four corners, but more or less all round the coast. Hence the country has been likened to a pie with the crust in the middle much sunk.

3. Were the Atlantic to rise only 200 feet higher than it is now-no great rise for an ocean with an average depth of 12,000 feet-the great central plain of Ireland would become a sheet of water, encircled by a fringe of islands of no great height.

4. The soil of the central plain is mostly good, though some of it being of bog earth or peat is useless, except to cut up and dry for fuel. Nearly the seventh part of all Ireland is bog-land. Much of the plain is taken up by lakes; for the greatest part of the rain which falls in Ireland finds its way to the Atlantic on the west and south coasts.

4. Ireland has both coal and iron, but not, as in Great Britain, near together. Hence she is not a manufacturing country, and has but four large towns, Dublin, Belfast, Cork, and Limerick.

6. Manufactures and mineral wealth enable England to maintain an average of 430 people to the square mile; Wales, 164; and Scotland, 112. The soil of Ireland, very slightly aided by manufactures or mineral wealth, and fisheries, chiefly salmon, has to maintain 161 persons to the square mile.

7. Nearly 130 of these are employed in field or farm work. What wonder if many of the sons of Ireland, an open-hearted, bright, and clever, if somewhat thriftless and wasteful race, are always in a state of poverty, and too often lack the very necessaries of life?

8. Nothing short of a full development of her sea fisheries and the most careful agriculture could enable her to maintain so large a population in comfort. Many of the cotters of the west of Ireland leave their little plots and wretched hovels every summer and tramp about England, to eke out their scanty means by wage-earning in English harvestfields.

9. The main line of water-parting in Ireland may be traced from the Donegal headland of Bloody Foreland south-eastward, between the sources of the Foyle and the Erne, thence southward between the springs of the Boyne and the Shannon, thence along the eastern edge of the basin of the Shannon to the west of the sources of the Blackwater and the Lee as far as Mizen Head.

10. A second line of water-parting may be traced from the south of Wexford Bay between the Slaney and the Barrow to the Slieve Bloom Mountains.

II. A third line may be traced along the northeast coast from Fair Head and Belfast to the Mourne Mountains, and thence westward to the main line of water-parting.

12. Thus Ireland has four main water-sheds, one facing each of the fonr cardinal points. These water-sheds are very unequal in size. The western, as has been already stated, is far the largest. As each of the four provinces contains its own cluster of mountains it will be as well to deal with them in order, beginning at the north-east, and going round by the west and south to the east.

CHAPTER XV.

ULSTER.

1. This is the largest province, and contains the only large manufacturing town, Belfast, which has some 204,000 inhabitants. The town stands at the head of a deep inlet, sheltered from all winds but the north-east.

2. The entrance to Belfast Lough is less than fiveand-twenty miles from Portpatrick in the Mull of Galloway. Belfast makes fine linen and calico.

3. In the surrounding counties of Antrim, Down, and Armagh much flax is grown, to supply the town with the raw material which it needs for its damask, lawn, and other fine linen. The coal to work the mills is brought chiefly from Cumberland.

4. Fifteen miles to the west of Belfast spreads Lough Neagh, the largest lake in the British Isles, it being twenty miles long, and having an area of 150 square miles, which is half the area of Anglesey, and as large as Rutland.

5. The overflow of this lake is carried northward by the River Bann, which parts the high table-land of Antrim-the county in whose south-east corner stands Belfast-from the county of Londonderry. The chief town of the latter county, at the mouth of the River Foyle, shares the linen manufactures of Belfast; and having in Lough Foyle an excellent land-locked harbour, trades largely with Glasgow and Liverpool.

6. Two hundred years ago the English citizens of the town of Derry, which had been colonized by Londoners, having declared themselves in favour of William III., were besieged by the forces of James II., when he was attempting, with French aid, to regain his forfeited throne. The citizens made a most gallant and successful defence, in which they were greatly helped by a gift of cannon sent from their mother city, London. In acknowledgment of this gift, they prefixed London to the old name of the

town.

7. On the north coast of Antrim, which occupies the north-east corner of Ireland, are the strange black-green rocks known as The Giant's Causeway, made up of six-sided piles or columns, laid together like honeycombs. The peasantry deem these the handiwork of giants attempting to make a raised path or causeway across the North Channel to Scotland.

8. South of Belfast, along the east coast, lies County Down, which has a land-locked harbour in Lough Strangford.

9. In the south of the county rounded masses of granite, called the Mourne Mountains, tower to a height of 2796 feet. They overhang Lough Carlingford, at whose head stand the linen factories of Newry.

10. To the west of County Down, sloping northward towards Lough Neagh, lies Armagh, which has for its county town a small cathedral city of the same