influence of a southern climate, especially in Lucania, and in their continuation extend into Bruttium down to the peninsula which physically belongs to Sicily. The last extremity, which ought no longer to be called Apennines, for it neither belongs to them in a geological point of view, nor do the mountains run in the same direction—I allude to the mountain between Lucania and the isthmus—is the Sila, the large Bruttian range of mountains covered with fir forests, where the Romans had their large establishments for the manufacture of tar, and whence they derived their timber for ship-building. These general remarks about the mountains may suffice for the present: I shall enter more into detail, as occasions occur, and now pass on to the rivers. The PADUS, the _fluviorum rex Eridanus_, has none of the characteristics of a southern river; it has the same natural features as the Waal and the Leck in the Netherlands, for it is muddy, and as it has been so long shut in between embankments, its bed is so high, that the surface of its waters is from fifteen to twenty feet above the level of the surrounding country. The whole basin of the Po, and of the rivers emptying themselves into it, was originally a vast bay of the sea, which was gradually confined to these rivers; it is a “river-marsh,” as the people in Dithmarsh would say. How many thousands of years may this process have lasted! At the time when the mouth of the Po was far above the point where it now is, a succession of downs had been formed from the neighbourhood of Rimini as far as the innermost corner of the Adriatic, or as far as Aquileia and Trieste, just as in the Kurische and Frische Nehrung in Prussia, and as was formerly the case along the coast from Calais to Jutland. Behind these downs there was a vast inland lagune which became gradually filled up; in the neighbourhood of Venice the filling up is prevented only by artificial means. These hillocks of sand are now called _lido_; such a one exists near Venice, and upon it depends the safety of the city during high floods. Ravenna was in antiquity a city like Venice, built upon islands and stakes; but the space gained in the course of 2000 years scarcely amounts to eight miles. All the rivers descending from the Apennines on the south of the Po empty themselves into it, and all those which flow from the north on the east of the lake of Garda discharge their waters into the lagunes: they all have their share in extending the coast. The most important of these rivers will be mentioned, when I come to speak of the countries to which they belong.