tributed, for it is possible to divide a globe into two halves, of which one will be nearly all water and the other nearly all land. Strange to say, the centre of this land hemisphere or half-globe-is near Bristol; for if you were to put the one point of a pair of compasses down there, and sweep round the half of the globe with the other, you would find that you included all the Dry Land except the south of South America, the island continent of Australia, some of the large islands of the Indian Ocean, and the end of the Malayan Peninsula, Siam and Cochin China, with whatever may yet be found round the South Pole. 3. The first great division of the one immense ocean is called the Arctic Ocean, or Icy Sea. It is connected with the Atlantic by the broad waters between Greenland and Northern Europe, and with the Pacific by Behring's Straits. Arctic, I may say, is the name given to the most northern portions of the earth, because they lie under the constellation of the Great Bear—arktos meaning a bear in Greek. Behring's Straits got their name from Behring, a Dane in the service of Russia, who discovered them in 1728. 4. The Arctic Ocean is in great part shut up from navigation round the whole year, but in the more southern portions it is resorted to for the whale and seal fisheries. Its waters wash the northern coasts of America, and it was long the object of many scientific voyages to force a way from one side to the other, along this route. The ships under Sir John Franklin passed in 1846 or 1847, through the last portion of it that had not been previously explored, but they were lost, and their crews perished to a man. The farthest point north, reached by any discoverers, was attained by some of the officers and men under Captain Nares, who got within less than six degrees, or 360 miles, of the North Pole. They found the ocean at that high latitude covered with ice which never broke up sufficiently to float away, and thus accumulated, year after year, till the great broken fragments were piled over each other in such mountainous and impassable confusion that they gave it the appropriate name of "The Sea of Ancient Ice." 5. The Antarctic Ocean-or ocean opposite the Arcticsurrounds the South Pole as the Arctic surrounds the North Pole, but the cold is so much greater that it has been impossible to explore it as much as the Arctic has been explored. Land has been seen at various points, but a wall of unbroken ice and snow fills up all openings, if there are any, so that no one can penetrate it. 6. The Atlantic Ocean stretches between Europe and Africa on the east, and the two American continents on the west. North and south, it reaches from the northern to the southern Polar Seas. It gets its name from a fabled island, called Atlantis, which was supposed to be to the west of Africa. 7. It is the most busily navigated of all the oceans, and also the one which offers the greatest facilities for intercourse between different lands, by its great bays, arms, and subordinate seas, opening an immense line of coast to commerce and travel. 8. The Baltic, the Mediterranean, and even the Black Sea, may be considered part of it, and so may the vast gulf of St. Lawrence, in America. Its length is not less than 9000 miles, and it is over 4000 miles broad in some parts. 9. The Indian Ocean is the name given to the waters between Africa, Asia, and Australia. It is about 6,500 miles from north to south, and from 4000 to 6000 from east to west. 10. The Pacific Ocean stretches from Behring's Straits, where it unites with the Arctic Ocean, to the Antarctic Ocean, in the extreme south, and from the western coasts of the two Americas to the Indian Ocean. It is the largest of the five great Seas, and covers a larger surface than all the dry land on the globe. It has a great many islands, but not many great bays. 11. The depth of the ocean varies as much as it would if it rested on the dry land with its mountains, valleys, and uplands, instead of in its own bed, for there are mountains, valleys and uplands below the ocean as much as above it. The deepest part as yet sounded has proved to be seven miles, which would let two of the highest mountains in the world be put one on the top of the other, and leave a mile of water above them. But this is a very unusual depth, and perhaps we would be near the truth if we imagine the waters to be on an average two miles in depth. Even on this calculation, however, all the land in the world might be thrown into the sea for a mile below the present surface of the waters, before the bottom of the ocean bed was made smooth all round. 12. The saltness of the sea causes it to be heavier than fresh water, for there are about three and a-half parts of salt in every hundred parts of it. But the saltness is not everywhere the same, for some seas are more acted on by the sun than others, and thus lose more of their water, leaving the saltness so much the greater. It is wonderful, however, to think what a quantity of salt the sea contains, for, if all the water were to be evaporated, it is thought there would be a mass left behind, as huge as perhaps a tenth part of all the dry land in the world. You can easily see, from this, how the great beds of rock-salt have been left in the beds of ancient lakes and oceans, when the waters dried up. FLEETING PLEASURES. BUT pleasures are like poppies spread, A moment white-then melts for ever: That flit ere you can point their place : END OF ᏢᎪᎡᎢ I, PART II. KING ALFRED THE GREAT.-DR. GEIKIE. 1. I HAVE to tell you a story about what happened in England long, long ago, when there were not nearly so many people in the whole of our country as there are now in London alone. Try to think yourselves living a thousand years ago, and you will then be surrounded by the men and women of whom I have to write, who were just as full of life, and its cares and work, in that faraway time as you and I are now. 2. It is long since England has seen armies landing on it from other countries, to plunder and burn our houses, and murder our fathers and mothers. But in old times, first the Romans, then the Saxons and other German tribes, then the Danes, and, last of all, the Normans, came into England in fierce multitudes, and spread misery and death around them. 3. I have to speak to you now of the Danes, who are the people of Denmark, and were for over two hundred years the dreaded invaders of England. They were brave sailors, and used to sweep across the North Sea in great fleets of open boats, which were the only ships in those P |