Birds are found in great variety, and include the falcon, pheasant, teal, stork, pigeon, wild-goose, duck, quail, curlew, plover, snipe, raven, pelican, crane, and heron. Reptiles, especially snakes, lizards, and tortoises, are numerous; and the seas abound with fish, which are taken in great quantities. Corals, pearls, and ambergris are also obtained. The domestic animals are few; elephants, camels, asses, mules, and sheep, are unknown; the horse is used only for the saddle, buffaloes and oxen being the animals employed for draught and burden; but it is contrary to the Buddhist religion to use their flesh as meat.

Ethnography.—The Japanese are probably of the Mongolian race, with some admixture of Malay blood; but it remains very uncertain from what country they migrated, as they have been located in their present insular home from time immemorial. They do not resemble the Chinese in physical structure, language, or ancient religion.

Dr Macgowan, who has paid great attention to the ethnology of Japan, regards the people as a mixture of the Caucasian, Kamtchatkan, and several other races. They are small in stature, the average height of the men being five feet four inches. The eyes are black, hair coarse, complexion sallow, hands and feet very small. After marriage the women blacken their teeth and pluck out their eyebrows. The Japanese, Loo-Chooan, and Corean Languages are very closely allied to each other: they are phonetic, polysyllabic, and, to some extent, inflexional, and thus differ widely from the Chinese; yet, on the whole, they have so many affinities with the Turanian or Finno-Tartarian family of languages, that they must, at least provisionally, be classed under that stock. The Japanese has several terms in common with the Mongolian and Finnish; very many Chinese words, greatly modified in pronunciation, have been introduced, partly by Chinese colonists, but more especially by the influence of Chinese literature, on which all the learning of Japan is based. The Japanese have a written literature, some science, and a taste for music. Their ancient Religion was the Sinto or Sin-sin ("doctrine of spirits"), so called because consisting chiefly in the adoration of numerous spirits supposed to preside over all things, whether in the visible or invisible world. But in the sixth century Buddhism was introduced, and now the great bulk of the inhabitants conform to it, while a few have adopted the doctrines of Confucius.

Government.-The Government of Japan consists of a federal oligarchy, with a temporal and a spiritual sovereign. The temporal emperor, called the Tycoon, possesses a veto power over the Council; while the authority of the spiritual sovereign, or Mikado, extends to all matters connected with religion and education. Neither of these possesses much political power, the real authority being in the hands of the Daimios, or princes, of whom there are at least two hundred, and who form a feudal aristocracy not dissimilar to that of Europe in the early middle ages. Each of them is almost perfectly absolute in his own territory. The majority of them maintain an armed force, which in the aggregate amounts to 370,000 infantry and 40,000 cavalry; while the imperial army, maintained by the Tycoon, numbers 80,000 infantry and 20,000 cavalry.

Commerce, &c.-Japan has, like China, kept itself aloof for ages from other nations: some trade was allowed with Chinese merchants, who brought broadcloth and other stuffs to Nagasaki, in return for coal, sea-slugs, copper, and lacquered wares;, and the Dutch were permitted to send two ships annually to the same port with wax, camphor, spices, ivory, lead, iron bars, quicksilver, glass wares, &c., for which they received in return, copper, silk, pitch, and Japanese manufactures.

In 1854 a general convention of peace and amity was signed between Japan and the United States, by which the ports of Nagasaki, Simoda, and Hakodadi were opened to the ships of the latter for trade and protection, and consuls from the United States were allowed to reside in Japan. In the following year similar privileges were accorded to England, France, and Russia. These privileges were still further extended in 1858-Lord Elgin, the British Ambassador, having entered Yeddo, and obtained from the emperor a liberal treaty of commerce, which secures the advantages of an unfettered commerce to all nations at the following ports-viz., Hakodadi, Nagasaki, Kanagawa, and Hiego; while from 1st January 1862, British subjects may reside at Yeddo, Osaca, and Hiego. The law which forbids intercourse with foreign nations compels the Japanese to draw on their own resources, and the empire is nearly independent of external aid. In manufacturing industry they are quite abreast of the Chinese, and in some rural arts they are unrivalled, as in the dwarfing of forest-trees, and in raising radishes and other bulbous roots of an enormous size; while their sword-blades, telescopes, clocks, silk and cotton fabrics, porcelain, lacquered and japanned ware, are particularly excellent. In some of these arts the Japanese have attained such perfection that even Europeans may gain some useful hints from them. They are a remarkably ingenious race, readily acquiring the advanced ideas of Western Europe. Hitherto they have only been acquainted with the Chinese mode of printing from wooden blocks, but very recently type-founding and electrotyping have been introduced. The chief exports are copper, camphor, tea, silk of a very superior quality, lacquered ware, insect wax, painted paper, flax, hemp, and tobacco. In 1866 Japan exported to Great Britain goods to the value of £181,000, The principal imports are sugar, coffee, spices, lead, tin, and iron-ware. From Britain she receives printed cottons, cambrics, flannels, and window glass, to the amount of £1,220,000.

AFRICA.

1. Boundaries.-N., the Mediterranean; W., the Atlantic ; S., the Southern Ocean; E., the Indian Ocean, Red Sea, and Isthmus of Suez, which unites it to Asia.

Africa extends from lat. 37° 20′ N. (Ras-al-Krun) to 34° 50' S. (Cape Agulhas); and from lon. 17° 33′ W. (Cape Verd) to 51° 22′ E. (Cape Guardafui); and thus embraces 72° of lat. and 69° of lon. Its exact centre, 1° 15′ N. of the equator, and 7° E. of the Bight of Biafra, is in

the same lat. as Quito, the mouth of the Amazon, and the centre of the islands Sumatra and Borneo, and in the same lon. as Stockholm, Breslau, Vienna, Cape Spartivento, Lake Tchad, and Cape Town. Its N. extremity is on the same parallel as San Francisco, Cape Charles, the Azores, Cape St Vincent, Athens, Lake Urumiah, Astrabad, and Yarkand; and its S., as Monte Video in Uruguay, and Adelaide in South Australia. Africa is the only continent which has a large extent of land on either side of the equator. Its great mass lies within the tropics, and consequently it is the hottest of all the continents, and may rightly be designated the tropical continent. It is not merely its geographical position that imparts to it this distinction; for it is separated from the two other continents of the Old World by comparatively narrow inland seas, while its plateaux and mountain-ranges are of very moderate elevation. It is, in fact, a vast peninsula of Asia-Europe, as south America is of the northern continent.

2. Form and Dimensions.-In form it resembles a pear, with a large indentation on the western side, and a corresponding projection on the eastern. The extreme length from N. to S., which is nearly equalled by the extreme breadth, falls little short of 5000 m. The coast-line is estimated at 16,000 m., or 1. m of coast to every 710 m. of surface; while Europe has 1 in 225 m., America 1 in 490, and Asia 1 in 550. This single fact goes far to explain the past history of Africa: shutting herself up from the sea on all sides, she has ever remained isolated from the rest of the world, and little influenced by those social or political revolutions that have so powerfully promoted civilisation in the other continents of the eastern hemisphere.

3. Area and Population.-Great uncertainty still attaches to the area of Africa, but it is usually estimated at 11,556,300 sq. m., being about three times the area of Europe with its islands, or two-thirds that of Asia. It is thus the second largest of the six great divisions of the globe, and decidedly larger than either of the other southern continents. No precise data can yet be given for the population; but according to the latest estimates it amounts to about 188,000,000, or somewhat more than one-seventh of the human race. Next to Europe and Asia, it is the most densely peopled continent, having 16 persons to each sq. m., while Asia has 42, and Europe 75. Formerly the population of Africa was estimated at from 60,000,000 to 80,000,000; but recent travellers, who have penetrated far into the interior, have found many places much more densely peopled than they had been understood to be.

4. Political Divisions.-As much of the continent remains unexplored, and as the political relations of many of the barbarous nations lying south of the Sahara are continually fluctuating, the actual number of independent states cannot be specified with any degree of accuracy. The annexed table, however, embraces all the really important divisions, though not a few of the designations employed are rather geographical than political.

5. Surface and Mountains.-The surface of Africa, as a whole, consists of an immense, moderately-elevated plateau. If we draw a line from the Gulf of Aden to the Bight of Biafra, the region lying north of the line forms an immense oval, having its greatest extension from east to west; while that to the south of the line forms a triangle, with its greatest length from north to south. This triangle is in general of twice the elevation of the oval, while in each the mountain-ranges pursue the direction of the greatest length, along the outer margin, with the lower grounds forming the interior. The general elevation of the northern plateau is about 2000 ft., and of the southern from 4000 to 5000 ft. A narrow, elongated plain occupies the N., from the Mediterranean to Mount Atlas, and from the Atlantic to the Red Sea. S. of Mount Atlas is the Sahara, or Great Desert, an immense sandy waste, but presenting great diversity in its physical configuration, some parts being low and flat, while in others it consists of table-lands and hills. The region of Nigritia, of one-fourth the size of the Sahara, consists of an immense plateau of from 1000 to 3000 ft. in elevation. The basin of Lake Tchad, however, is less than 1000 ft. high; but the region between the lake and the Chadda rises in Mount Mindif to 6000 ft. S. of Nigritia the Kong Mountains, from 2000 to 3000 ft., form an immense wall, separating Soudan from Guinea. Near the sources of the Chadda, Mount Älantika rises to the height of 9000 ft. Proceeding eastward, we arrive at the mountains of Abyssinia, one of which, Ras Detschen, is 15,986 ft. high, and Abba Jarrat 15,020 ft. Proceeding to the peninsular part of the continent, we find an immense mountain-range skirting the eastern side, from C. Guardafui to the Cape of Good Hope. The range attains its maximum elevation in the volcanic peaks of Kilimandjaro, 20,065 (the highest mountain in Africa, so far as yet known), and Kenia, 18,000 ft. Towards the apex of the triangle are the Drakenberg mountains in Natal, 10,357 ft., and the Compass Berg, in Cape Colony, 8500 ft. On the western margin of the triangle are the Omatako Berg, in the Damara Country, 8739 ft.; the Camaroons Mountains, near the Bight of Biafra, reaching, in Albert Volcano, a height of 13,000 ft. Far to the east of these are the Blue Mountains, skirting the W. side of Lake Albert Nyanza, and, according to Sir Samuel Baker, who saw them in 1865, supposed to be 7000 ft. above the level of the lake, or 9500 ft. above the sea. There are no extensive low-lying plains in Africa, such as occur in other quarters of the globe, with the exception of the basin of Lake Tchad, 830 ft. above the sea-level; the oases and some waterless depressions of the Great Desert; the basin of Lake Tanganyika, which has an elevation above the sea of 2844 ft.; and certain parts of the coast, especially the deltas of the Nile, Senegal, Gambia, Rio Grande, and the Quorra or Niger.

6. Isthmus and Capes.—Isthmus of Suez, uniting Africa with Asia, 72 m. broad, and now traversed by a canal; Capes Bonn and Ras-al-Krun, N. of Tunis; Spartel, N. of Marocco; Cantin and Nun, W. of Marocco; Bojador and Blanco, W. of the Sahara; Verd