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heir to the Crown had been increased by the expression | in the life of the nation and his wide interests may be of his satisfaction at his son's union to an Englishwoman. On 6th July 1893 the broken thread was reunited by the marriage of the princess (popularly known as Princess May) to the brother of the deceased prince, George Frederick, duke of York.

The year 1894 was a busy one for the prince of Wales, who became a member of the Royal Commission on the Housing of the Poor, opened the Tower Bridge, attended the Welsh Eisteddfod and was duly initiated, and paid two visits to Russia- -one on the marriage of the Grand Duchess Xenia, the other on the death of the Tsar, his brother-in-law. In 1896 he became first Chancellor of the University of Wales, and his first act after his installation at Aberystwith was to confer an honorary degree upon the princess. He had already been for some years a trustee of the British Museum, and participated actively in its administration. On 22nd July 1896 the prince's third daughter, Princess Maud, was married to Prince Charles of Denmark. The arrangements for the Queen's Jubilee of 1897 depended upon the prince even more than those of the corresponding celebration in 1887: he rode on the Queen's right at the great procession to St Paul's, and as an Admiral of the Fleet presided at the naval review at Spithead, a spectacle unparalleled in the history of the world. In July 1898 the prince had the misfortune to fracture his knee-cap while on a visit to Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, but completely recovered from the effects of the accident. In December 1899, while passing through Brussels on his way to St Petersburg, he was fired at by a miserable lad named Sipido, crazed by reading anarchist literature. Fortunately, no injury was done.

It was the especial distinction of Albert Edward, prince of Wales, to have been an ornament and support of the throne before he was called upon to fill it himself. This cannot be said of any of his predecessors except Edward the Black Prince. Most princes of Wales have either died or attained the regal dignity too early to leave any conspicuous mark in history as princes. Since the days of the Black Prince only two have enjoyed a popularity comparable to Prince Albert Edward's-Henry of Monmouth and Henry, the son of James I. The glories of Henry V. have cast a veil over the irregularities of Prince Hal; and the popularity of the Stuart Prince Henry arose in great measure from his suppressed antagonism to his father, and the expectation that he would reverse the latter's policy. The other two princes of Wales who have filled a conspicuous place in the public eye, Prince Frederick and George IV., were neither dutiful nor popular. It was reserved for the son of Queen Victoria to show what strength an heir-apparent exemplary in the discharge of the duties of his station can bring to a monarchy, and how important! a place, even with the most scrupulous abstinence from party politics, he can fill in the life of a selfgoverning nation. He was a keen patron of the theatre, and made it his business to know and remember all the distinguished men of the time in arts and letters. His thoroughly British taste for sport was as pronounced as his inclination for most of the contemporary amusements of Society. The "Tranby Croft Case" (1890), in which Sir William Gordon Cumming brought an unsuccessful libel action for having been accused of cheating at a game of baccarat, caused some comment in connexion with the Prince's appearance in the witness - box on behalf of the defendants. But it did him no disservice with the people to have twice won the Derby with his horses Persimmon (1896) and Diamond Jubilee (1900), and his interest in yacht-racing was conspicuously shown at all the important fixtures, his yacht Britannia being one of the best of her day. In other respects his activity

illustrated by his establishment (1897) of the "Prince of Wales's Hospital Fund," his devotion to the cause of Masonry (he was first elected Grand Master of the Freemasons of England in 1874), and his position as a Bencher of the Middle Temple, where he also became (1887) Treasurer. It was on the occasion of his first appearance at Grand Night," that the students were for the first time allowed to follow the Prince's example and to smoke in Hall; and this was only one instance of the influence in this respect which the Prince's taste for tobacco had on English society.

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On the death of Queen Victoria on 22nd January 1901, the question what title the new king would assume was speedily set at rest by the popular announcement that he would be called Edward the Seventh. The new reign began auspiciously by the holding of a Privy Council at St. James's Palace, at which the King announced his intention to follow in his predecessor's footsteps and to govern as a constitutional sovereign, and received the oaths of allegiance. On 14th February the King and Queen opened Parliament in state. Shortly afterwards it was announced that the visit of the duke and duchess of York to Australia, in order to inaugurate the new Commonwealth, which had been sanctioned by Queen Victoria, would be proceeded with; and on 16th March they set out on board the Ophir with a brilliant suite. The tour lasted till 1st November, the duke and duchess having visited Australia, New Zealand, the Cape, and Canada; and on their return the King, on 9th November, created the duke prince of Wales and earl of Chester. In the meanwhile Parliament had settled the new Civil List (q.v.) at £470,000 a year. On 22nd May the King had a narrow escape in Southampton Water, on board Sir T. Lipton's yacht Shamrock II. (which was to compete for the America Cup). The yacht had her masts, spars, and entire spread of canvas carried away in a squall; but the King suffered no injury. The question of enlarging the Royal title to include specific mention of the colonial empire had been discussed during the year, and on 30th July Parliament passed a Bill to enable the King to style himself "Edward VII., by the grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and of all the British Dominions beyond the Seas, King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India." The Coronation was fixed for 26th June 1902. Two days earlier, however, the King was announced to be suffering from perityphlitis, and on 24th June an operation was performed by Sir Frederick Treves. The Coronation was consequently postponed. On 27th June the King was pronounced "out of immediate danger," and up to 1st July, when this volume was printed, he was stated to be progressing favourably.

The grandchildren of King Edward VII. are-children of the prince and princess of Wales (1) Prince Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David, born 23rd June 1894; (2) Prince Albert Frederick Arthur George, born 14th December 1895; (3) Princess Victoria Alexandra Alice Mary, born 25th April 1897; (4) Prince Henry William Frederick Albert, born 15th March 1899. Children of the duke and duchess of Fife-(1) Lady Alexandra Victoria Alberta Edwina Louise Duff, born 17th May 1891; (2) Lady Maud Alexandra Victoria Georgina Bertha Duff, born 3rd April 1893.

Edwardsville, capital of Madison county, Illinois, U.S.A., on Cahokia creek, at an altitude of 554 feet. It has three railways, the Wabash, the Toledo, St Louis, and Kansas City, and the Chicago, Peoria, and St Louis. Population (1880), 2887; (1890), 3561; (1900), 4157

Edwardsville, a borough of Lucerne county, Pa., U.S.A., in the anthracite coal region, on the north branch of the Susquehanna river. The official name of the post office is Edwardsdale. Population (1900), 5165,

Eel.-The common fresh-water eel belongs to a group of soft-rayed fishes distinguished by the presence of an opening to the air-bladder and the absence of the pelvic fins. With its nearest relatives it forms the family Murændæ, all of which are of elongated cylindrical form. The special peculiarities of the eel are the rudimentary scales buried in the skin, the well-developed pectoral fins, the rounded tail fin continuous with the dorsal and ventral fins. Only one other species of the family occurs in British waters, namely, the conger, which is usually much larger, and lives in the sea. In the conger the eyes are larger than in the eel, and the upper jaw overlaps the lower, whereas in the eel the lower jaw projects beyond the upper. Both species are voracious and predatory, and feed on almost any animal food they can obtain, living or dead. The conger is especially fond of squid or other Cephalopods, while the eel is partial to carrion. The common eel occurs in all the rivers and fresh waters of Europe, except those draining towards the Arctic Ocean, the Black Sea, and the Caspian Sea. It also occurs on the Atlantic side of North America. The conger has a wider range, extending from the western and southern shores of Britain and Ireland to the East Indian Archipelago and Japan. It is common in the Mediterranean.

The

The ovaries of the ecl resemble somewhat these of the salmon in structure, not forming closed sacs, as in the majority of Teleostei, but consisting of lamina exposed to the body cavity. laminæ in which the eggs are produced are very numerous, and are attached transversely by their inner edges to a membranous band running nearly the whole length of the body-cavity. The majority of the eels captured for market are females with the ovaries in an immature condition. The male eel was first discovered in 1873 by Syrski at Trieste, the testis being described by him as a lobed elongated organ, in the same relative position as the ovary in the female, surrounded by a smooth surface without laminæ. He did not find ripe spermatozoa. He discovered the male by examining small specimens, all the larger being female. Jacoby, a later observer, found no males exceeding 19 inches in length, while the female may reach a length of 39 inches or more. Dr Petersen, in a paper published in 1896, states that in Denmark two kinds of eels are distinguished by the fishermen, namely, yellow eels and silver eels. The silver eels are further distinguished by the shape of the snout and the size of the eyes. The snout in front of the eyes is not flat, as in the yellow eels, but high and compressed, and therefore appears more pointed, while the eyes are much larger and directed outwards. In both kinds there are males and females, but Petersen shows that the yellow eels change into silver eels when they migrate to the sea. sexual organs in the silver eels are more developed than in the yellow cels, and the former have almost or entirely ceased to take food. The male silver eels are from 11 to 19 inches in length, the females from 16 to about 39 inches. It is evident, therefore, that if eels only spawn once, they do not all reach the same size when they become sexually mature. The male conger was first described in 1879 by Hermes, who obtained a ripe specimen in the Berlin Aquarium. This specimen was not quite 23 feet in length, and of the numerous males which have been identified at the Plymouth Laboratory, none exceeded this length. The large numbers of conger above this size caught for the market are all immature females. Female conger of 5 or 6 feet in length and weighing from 30 to 50 lb are common enough, and occasionally they exceed these limits. The largest recorded was 8 feet 3 inches long, and weighed 128 fb.

The

There is every reason to believe that eels and conger spawn but once in their lives, and die soon after they have discharged their generative products. When kept in aquaria, both male and female conger are vigorous and voracious. The males sooner or later cease to feed, and attain to the sexually mature condition, emitting ripe milt when handled and gently squeezed. They live in this condition five or six months, taking no food, and showing gradual wasting and disease of the bodily organs. The eyes and skin become ulcerated, the sight is entirely lost, and the bones become soft through loss of lime. The females also after a time cease to feed, and live in a fasting condition for five or six months, during which time the ovaries develop and reach great size and weight, while the bones become soft and the teeth disappear. The female, however, always dies in confinement before the ova are perfectly ripe and before they are liberated from the ovarian tissue. absence of some necessary condition, perhaps merely of the pressure which exists at the bottom of the sea, evidently prevents the com

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plete development of the ovary. The invariable death of the fish in the same almost ripe condition leads to the conclusion that under normal conditions the fish dies after the mature ova have been discharged. Grassi states that he obtained ripe male eels, and ripe specimens of Muræna, another genus of the family, in the whirlpools of the Strait of Messina. A ripe female Muræna has also been described at Zanzibar. Gravid female eels, i.c., specimens with ovaries greatly enlarged, have been occasionally obtained in fresh water, but there is no doubt that, normally, sexual maturity is attained only in the sea.

Until recent years nothing was known from direct observation concerning the reproduction of the common eel, or any species of the family. It was a well-known fact that large eels migrated towards the sea in autumn, and that in the spring small transparent eels of 2 inches in length and upwards were common on the shore under stones, and ascended rivers and streams in vast swarms. It was reasonable, therefore, to infer that the mature eels spawned in the sea, and that there the young were developed.

A group of peculiar small fishes were, however, known which were called Leptocephali, from the small proportional size of the

Leptocephali. (By kind permission of J. & A. Churchill.)

head. The first of these described was captured in 1763 near Holyhead, and became the type of L. Morrisii, other specimens of which have been taken either near the shore or at the surface of the sea. Other forms placed in the same genus had been taken by surface fishing in the Mediterranean and in tropical ocean currents. The chief peculiarities of Leptocephali, in addition to the smallness of the head, are their ribbon-like shape and their glassy transparency during life. The body is flattened from side to side, and broad from the dorsal to the ventral edge. Like the eels, they are destitute of pelvic fins, and no generative organs have been observed in them (see Fig. above).

In 1864 the American naturalist, Gill, published the conclusion that L. Morrisii was the young or larva of the conger, and Leptocephali generally the young stages of species of Murænidæ. In 1886 this conclusion was confirmed from direct observation by Yves Delage, who kept alive in a tank at Roscoff a specimen of L. Morrisii, and saw it gradually transformed into a young conger. From 1887 to 1892 Professor Grassi and Dr Calandruccio carried on careful and successful researches into the development of the Leptocephali at Catania, in Sicily. The specimens were captured in considerable numbers in the harbour, and the transformation of L. Morrisii into young conger, and of various other forms of Leptocephalus into other genera of Murænidæ, such as Murana, Congromurana, and Ophichthys, was observed. In 1894 the same authors published the announcement that another species of Leptocephalus, namely, L. brevirostris, was the larva of the common eel. This larval form was captured in numbers with other Leptocephali in the strong currents of the Strait of Messina. In the metamorphosis of all Leptocephali a great reduction in size occurs. The L. brevirostris reaches a length of 8 cm., or a little more than 2 inches, while the perfectly-formed young eel is 2 inches long or a little more.

The Italian naturalists have also satisfied themselves that certain pelagic fish eggs originally described by Raffaele at Naples are the eggs of Murænidæ, and that among them are the eggs of

Conger and Anguilla. They believe that these eggs, although free in the water, remain usually near the bottom at great depths, and that fertilization takes place under similar conditions. No fish eggs of the kind to which reference is here made have yet been obtained on the British coasts, although conger and eels are so abundant there. Raffaele described and figured the larva newly hatched from one of the eggs under consideration, and it is evident that this larva is the earliest stage of a Leptocephalus.

See "The Eel Question," Report U.S. Commissioner of Fisheries for 1879. Washington, 1882.-CUNNINGHAM, "Reproduction and Development of the Conger," Journ. Mar. Biol. Assn. vol. ii.– PETERSEN, Report Dan. Biol. Station, v., 1894.-GRASSI, Quart. Journ. Mic. Sci. vol. xxxix., 1897. (J. T. C.)

Eger, the chief town of the government district of the same name in Bohemia; connected by rail with Nuremberg, Prague, Vienna, Reichenberg, &c. Population (1890), 18,658; (1900), 23,665, almost exclusively German (estimated at 91 per cent. Roman Catholic, 6 per cent. Protestant, and 3 per cent. Jewish). There is a garrison of 1069 men. Latterly Eger has been very prominent on account of its strong Pan-Germanic sentiment. The town

is exceptionally interesting from its ancient buildings, collection of historical relics of Wallenstein, &c. There is a considerable textile industry, together with the manufacture of shoes, machinery, brewing, milling, &c. The inhabitants of the district are still distinguished from the surrounding population by their costumes, language, manners, and customs.

Egham, a town and railway station in the Chertsey parliamentary division of Surrey, England, on the Thames, 21 miles west by south of London by rail. The parish

THE

GEOGRAPHY AND STATISTICS.

church contains monuments by Flaxman. Within the parish are the Royal Indian Engineering College on Cooper's Hill, the hill celebrated in Sir John Denham's poem, 1642, the Royal Holloway College for Women, the Holloway sanatorium for the treatment of mental ailments, and a cottage hospital; also the field of Runnymede, where King John signed Magna Carta, and (partly in Berkshire) Virginia Water, a large artificial lake in the south of Windsor Great Park. Area of parish (with Englefield), 7786 acres. Population (1881), 8692; (1901), 11,894.

Egin (Armenian, Agn, "the spring"), an important town in the Memuret el-Aziz viláyet of Asiatic Turkey (altitude, 3300 feet). It is picturesquely situated in a theatre of lofty, abrupt rocks, on the right bank of the Western Euphrates, at the point where the KharpútErzingan road crosses the river by a wooden bridge. The stone houses stand in terraced gardens and orchards, and the streets are mere rock-ladders. The population numbers 10,000 (Moslems 6000, Armenians 4000). Egin was settled by Armenians who emigrated from Van in the 11th century with Senekherim. On 8th November 1895 many Armenians were massacred.

Egorievsk, a district town of Russia, government and 74 miles north-east of Ryazañ, connected by a branch line (14 miles) with the Moscow to Ryazañ main line. Its cotton mills (yielding over £500,000 a year) and other factories give occupation to 6000 persons. It has important fairs for trade in grain, hides, &c., exported. Population, 20,000.

EGYPT.

HE salient physical features of Egypt may be grouped as follows, each division having its own characteristic features, due essentially to the geological structure of the country: (1) the Delta, (2) the Trough or "Rift" Valleys, (3) the Desert Plateaux, (4) the mountainous region in the east and north-east. The Nile must also be considered separately.

The Delta. The delta of the Nile occupies a triangular area north of Cairo, measuring 100 miles from south to north, and having a width of 155 miles on the shore of the Mediterranean between Alexandria on the west and Port Said on the east. Beyond these two points the low hills of the desert form the coast-line, while between them the low sandy shore of the delta, slowly increasing by the annual deposit of silt by the river, is a barren area of sand hills and salty waste, land, except in a few parts where reclamation has already made progress. Southwards the quality of the soil rapidly improves, and becomes the most fertile part of Egypt. This area is watered by the Damietta and the Rosetta branches of the Nile, and by the network of canals which, beginning at Cairo and the Barrage, intersects the whole delta and extends eastwards through the Wadi Tumilat as far as Suez. The soil of the delta is a dark grey fine sandy soil, becoming at times almost a stiff clay by reason of the fineness of its particles, which consist almost wholly of extremely small grains of quartz with a few other minerals, and often numerous flakes of mica. This deposit varies in thickness, as a rule, from 55 to 70 feet, at which depth it is underlain by a series of coarse and fine yellow quartz sands, with occasional pebbles, or even banks of gravel, while here and there thin beds of clay occur. These sand-beds are sharply distinguished by

their colour from the overlying Nile deposit, and are of considerable thickness. A boring made in 1886 for the Royal Society at Zagazig attained a depth of 375 feet without reaching rock, and another, recently sunk near Lake Abukir (close to Alexandria) by a company, reached a depth of 405 feet with the same result. Numerous other borings to depths of 100 to 200 feet have given similar results, showing the Nile deposit to rest generally on these yellow sands, which provide a constant though not a very large supply of good water; near the northern limits of the delta this cannot, however, be depended on, since the well water at these depths has proved on several occasions to be salt. The surface of the delta is a wide alluvial plain sloping gently towards the sea, and having an altitude of 29 feet above it at its southern extremity. The only inequalities are the mounds, formed of ruined mud-brick dwellings, which mark the site of ancient towns, or on which the present towns and villages stand, occupying often the same site as their predecessors of earlier times. Its limits east and west are determined by the higher ground of the deserts, to which the silt-laden waters of the Nile in flood time cannot reach.

The Valleys.-The valleys, which are a remarkable feature of the country, are those occupied respectively by the Nile, the Gulf of Suez, and the Gulf of Akaba, and each of these is a rift-valley determined by the subsidence of a narrow belt in the neighbourhood of a line of fracture on the earth's surface. In the Gulf of Suez, certainly, an upward movement is still in progress, as salines along the coast are still being formed as the land rises; but in the Nile Valley north of Assuan this is more difficult to determine, though certain slight local earthquake shocks, which occasionally occur, seem to point to the fact that that movement has not wholly ceased. The trough so

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formed has been filled by deposits of coarse and fine sand and gravel, containing numerous fragments of igneous rocks, which underlie the present Nile mud deposit, as in the Delta; and similarly, also, deep borings have reached no rock-floor up to the present. At Beni Suef, with the Tertiary limestone plateaux of the desert 3 miles distant, 400 feet of sands and clays were penetrated without any sign of rock, and at Medinet el Fayum a boring of 450 feet gave the same result.

Entering Egypt proper, a little to the north of the Second Cataract, the Nile flows through a valley in sandstone beds of Cretaceous age as far as latitude 25° N., and throughout this part of its course the valley is extremely narrow, rarely exceeding 2 miles in width. At two points, namely, Kalabsha and Assuan (First Cataract), its course is interrupted by outcrops of granites and other crystalline rocks, which have been uncovered by the erosion of the overlying sandstone, and to-day form the mass of islands, with numerous small rapids, which have been described not very accurately as cataracts; no good evidence exists in support of the view that they are the remains of a massive barrier, broken down and carried away by some sudden convulsion. From latitude 25° N. northwards for 518 miles the valley is of the "rift-valley" type, a level depression in the limestone plateau, enclosed usually by steep cliffs, except where the tributary valleys drained into the main valley in early times, when there was a larger rainfall, and which now carry off the occasional rainstorms that burst on the desert. The average width of the cultivation is about 10 miles, of which the greater part lies on the left bank of the river; and outside this is a belt, varying from a few hundred yards to 3 or 4 miles, of stony and sandy ground, reaching up to the foot of the limestone cliffs, which rise in places to as much as 1000 feet above the valley. This continues as far as latitude 29° N., after which the hills that close in the valley become lower, and the higher plateaux lie at a distance of 10 or 15 miles back in the desert. The fertile province of the Fayum, on the left bank of the Nile and separated from it by 6 miles of desert, seems to owe its existence to movements similar to those which determined the valley itself. Surrounded by Tertiary limestone strata on the north, west, and south, the boring above mentioned met with no representatives of these beds in the 450 feet which were penetrated. Lying in a basin sloping in a series of terraces from an altitude of 65 feet above sea-level in the east to about 140 feet below sealevel on the north-west, at the margin of the Birket-el-Kerun, this province is wholly irrigated by a large canal, the Bahr Yusef, which, leaving the Nile at Deirut in Upper Egypt, follows the western margin of the cultivation in the Nile Valley, and at length enters the Fayum through a gap in the desert hills by the XIIth Dynasty pyramids of Lahun and Hawara.

The Desert Plateaux.-Speaking generally, Egypt consists of a broad plateau of sedimentary rocks, lying on the western side of a band of crystalline rocks which occupy the southern part of the peninsula of Sinai and the western side of the Red Sea from latitude 29° N. southwards. In the north, where beds of Upper Tertiary age occur, the desert plateaux are comparatively low, but from Cairo southwards, as the Eocene limestones come in, they rise to 1000 and even 1500 feet above sea-level. Formed mostly of horizontal strata of varying hardness, they present a series of terraces of minor plateaux, rising one above the other, and intersected by small ravines worn by the occasional rainstorms which burst in their neighbourhood. The weathering of this desert area is probably fairly rapid, and the agents at work are principally the rapid heating and cooling of the rocks by day and night, and the erosive action of sand-laden wind on the softer layers; these, aided

by the occasional rain, are ceaselessly at work, and produce the successive plateaux, dotted with small isolated hills and cut up by valleys (wadis), which occasionally become deep ravines, thus forming the principal type of scenery of these deserts. From this it will be seen that the desert in Egypt is mainly a rock desert, where the surface is formed of disintegrated rock, the finer particles of which have been carried away by the wind; and east of the Nile this is almost exclusively the case. In the western desert, however, those large sand accumulations which are usually associated with a desert are met with. They occur as lines of dunes formed of rounded grains of quartz, and lie in the direction of the prevalent wind, usually being of small breadth as compared with their length; but in certain areas, such as that lying south-west and west of the Oases of Farafreh and Dakhleh, these lines of dunes, lying parallel to each other and about half a mile apart, cover immense areas, rendering them absolutely impassable except in a direction parallel to the lines themselves. East of the Oases of Baharieh and Farafreh is a very striking line of these sand dunes; rarely more than 3 miles wide, it extends almost continuously from Moghara in the north, passing along the west side of Khargeh Oasis to a point near the Nile in the neighbourhood of Abu Simbel in Nubia-having thus a length of nearly 550 miles. In the northern part of this desert the dunes lie about N.W.-S.E., but farther south incline more towards the meridian, becoming at last very nearly north and south.

Oases. In the western desert lie the five large oases of Egypt, namely, Siwah, Baharieh, Farafreh, Dakhleh, and Khargeh, occupying depressions in the plateau or, in the case of the last three, large indentations in the face of the escarpment formed by the Lower Eocene and Upper Cretaceous Limestones. Their fertility is due to a plentiful supply of water furnished by a sandstone bed 300 to 500 feet below the surface, whence the water rises through natural fissures or artificial boreholes to the surface, and sometimes to several feet above it. These oases were known and occupied by the Egyptians as early as 1600 B.C., and Khargeh rose to special importance at the time of the Persian occupation.

The Mountainous Region. The mountainous part of the country is that occupied by the crystalline rocks in the southern part of Sinai, and the belt occupying the western shore of the Gulf of Suez and Red Sea, where the principal peaks rise to heights of 6000 and 7000 feet. Owing to the slight rainfall, and the rapid weathering of the rocks by the great range of temperature, these hills rise steeply from the valleys at their feet as almost bare rock, supporting hardly any vegetation. In some of the valleys, wells or rock-pools filled by rain occur, and furnish drinking-water to the few Arabs who wander in these hills. Farther south, where the rainfall is greater, the valleys are more fertile, and support considerable numbers of camels, sheep, and goats.

The Egyptian Nile.-The Nile (q.v.) enters Egypt proper a little to the north of the Second Cataract, and between there and the First Cataract has a length of 200 miles and a slope of 100 From this point to the Barrage at the apex of the Delta the length is 605 miles and the slope 100, and thence to the sea, by either the Rosetta or Damietta branch, is 145 miles more. The Nile is at its lowest at Assuan at the end of May, then rises slowly until the middle of July, and rapidly throughout August, reaching its maximum at the beginning of September; it then falls slowly through October and November. At Cairo the lowest level is reached about the middle of June, after which the rise is slow in July and fairly rapid in August, reaching the maximum at the beginning of

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