"Right; but the little ring which you see over the A in the printed name of the town makes the pronunciation as though it were written O-bo. The proper style of the country is the Grand Duchy of Finland; and in his relations to it, the Czar of Russia has been called the Emperor Grand Duke. The Finnish name of the country is _Suomema_, which means 'the region of lakes.' You see, by a glance at the map,--which is rather rudely drawn,--that this is the character of the country, even to a greater degree than in Norway and Sweden. It has the Gulf of Bothnia on the west, and the Gulf of Finland on the south, with Finmark, a province of Norway, on the north, and Russia proper on the east." "But where is Lapland?" asked a student. "Lapland is a region which belongs to Russia and Norway, and part of it is included in Finland. The name is not applied to a political division, but to the country of a particular people. Finland has about one hundred and forty thousand square miles of territory; about the size of Montana Territory, more than half as large as Texas, or eighteen times as large as Massachusetts. Its population is about the same as this last state--in round numbers, one million four hundred thousand. A large portion of the country is a desolate region. In the southern part; the soil is good, and in former times Finland was the granary of Sweden; but its agriculture has since declined. Vast forests cover a considerable portion of its territory, and the lumber from them is the principal source of wealth to the people, who are also largely engaged in the fisheries. There are some extensive cotton and iron manufactures. All the principal towns are on the coast, except Tavastehus; but the largest place, Helsingfor, has only sixteen thousand inhabitants.