THE BLACK SEA. ITS ANCIENT AND MODERN NAMES.

STRAIT OF KERTCH. MUD VOLCANOES. FISH OF THE

WHATEVER may be the political issue of the present exciting war, one result has already accrued from it, not designed by either of the belligerent parties the improvement and extension of geographical knowledge. "My Lords" of the Admiralty have had their charts of the Baltic and Black Seas in no slight degree corrected and amplified by the surveying

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ships of the squadrons, and are now acquainted with the position, contour, capabilities, and dangers of many a fiord and inlet, before not known at all, or inaccurately delineated. Not a few also among the educated classes of society have received enlightenment respecting various localities, so as to form definite ideas of their configuration and features, with which aforetime they were only verbally familiar ; while the names of countries and places, of seas, shores, rivers, straits, and islands, have become household words to tens and hundreds of thousands, who were profoundly ignorant of them eighteen months ago. Who has not heard and talked of the Crimea, of Sebastopol and Balaklava, Perekop, and Eupatoria, Inkerman and the Alma? Nobles in their palaces, squires in their halls, peasants by their hearths, artizans at their craft, cottagers on lonely moors, and fishermen on dreary shores, have alike been hearing and repeating these terms, with an intelligent apprehension of their significance. But to a very large proportion of the community, at a recent date, the region to which they refer was a perfect terra incognita. If Sebastopol had then been mentioned, it would have been a dubious point to "mine host" of the hamlet and his satellite the ostler, now enfranchised with competent ideas,