salient down the Meuse has a certain geographical fitness, as the Meuse valley divides at Givet into two widely different parts. The northern frontier is purely historical, its position being due to the peculiar circumstances in which the Belgian monarchy arose.

(2) SURFACE, COAST, AND RIVER SYSTEMS

Surface

The geographical centre of Belgium is the high plateau (about 1,500 ft. above the sea) of the Ardennes, which occupies the southern corner of the country. The axis of the plateau may be said to pass through Bastogne and Bouillon. From this line the country falls away on both sides: north-north-west to the North Sea and s uth-east through the extreme southern district of Belgium to Arlon. As a result of this slope, a number of zones may be distinguished, lying more or less parallel to the coast, and each stretching approximately from east-north-east to westsouth-west. Enumerating these zones in order from

north to south, we find:

(a) The polders, land lying below the level of high tide, defended from the sea by a belt of sand-dunes, artificial dikes, and sluices, and drained partly by opening sluices at low tide and partly by pumping. The soil is peat, sand, and clay, mostly very rich and fertile; the whole district is intersected by drainagecanals.

(b) The sand belt. This comprises East Flanders, and (across the Scheldt) the Campine, a vast plain extending from Antwerp to the Meuse, in the neighbourhood of Maastricht. This district is all excessively flat and very wet; its soil is extremely barren, and the proverbial fertility of the country is entirely due to human effort, without which nothing would grow at all.

The same efforts are gradually being brought to bear on the Campine, which is still largely unpopulated waste marsh and heath.

(c) The clay and loam belt. This extends across the country from Ypres to Liège. In the west this strip is clay; in the east it is loam, which in the Hesbaye, a region extending along the north bank of the Sambre and thence from Charleroi to Liège, gives a good and fertile agricultural soil. A transitional area may be found in the plains in the neighbourhood of Brussels, which collectively form a sandy plateau, passing to loam on the south and falling into the low plains of the sand belt on the north. This transitional district may be conveniently referred to as Brabant.

(d) The limestone belt. The south bank of the Meuse from Namur to Liège is formed by the Condroz, a system of parallel ridges mostly of limestone, with a clayey soil. The same general character is continued east of Liège by the Herve plateau, and west of Namur through the district known as the Entre-Sambre-etMeuse down to Chimay. The whole belt is a tolerably good agricultural and stock-raising country with a fair amount of timber.

(e) The Ardennes are a rolling plateau of Devonian and Cambrian rocks, deeply scored by narrow rivervalleys, densely wooded in most parts, and having great tracts of peat-bog and marshy country. The soil is clayey, and the country is naturally unsuited to agriculture, but the scanty population thrives well, and the standard of prosperity is fairly high. Crossing the axis and descending on the other side we come to

(f) The Arlon or Jurassic belt, physically attached rather to Lorraine than to any part of Belgium. This district is hilly, but less so than the Ardennes, and is fairly good, though not rich, agricultural country.

Coast

Belgium possesses on the North Sea 42 miles of coast entirely unbroken by any natural openings. The Scheldt estuary, which forms the geographical key to all the water communications of Belgium, is in Dutch hands, and consequently the position of Antwerp as a Belgian port is ambiguous, owing to the fact that it can be approached only through Dutch waters. The same disability attaches to the considerable port of Ghent, which is connected with the Scheldt estuary at Terneuzen by a ship canal, of which the mouth and the northern half lie in Dutch territory.

River Systems

Excluding the small rivers of the Flemish littoral, of which only the Yser is of any importance, the rivers of Belgium form two systems, those of the Scheldt and the Meuse. The Scheldt system drains the northern plain, the Meuse system the southern hills.

The Scheldt system comprises, going from west to east, two slow navigable streams flowing eastwards from France, the Scheldt (Escaut) with its left-bank tributary the Lys, and four smaller rivers, the Dendre, Senne, Dyle, and Geete, which are not navigable. These last rise in the Hainaut-Hesbaye plateau and flow into the Scheldt estuary,

The trough of the Meuse system is the SambreMeuse valley from the French frontier to Liège. This is one of the most striking natural features of Belgium, and divides the country into the plains of the north and the hills of the south. It receives practically no drainage on its northern bank; the head-waters of the Scheldt tributaries here come quite close up to it, and are separated from it by a well-marked ridge.

The chief tributaries of the Meuse are, on the left (northern) bank, the Sambre, which joins the main stream at Namur; and on the right bank, the Semois, the Lesse, the Ourthe with its affluent the Amblève, and the Vesdre. The two latter rivers join the Meuse at Liège. All these rivers of the Ardennes or Meuse system are tortuous and flow in narrow, deeply cut valleys at some distance below the plateau. With the exception of the Meuse they are shallow and rapid, more suited to supplying water-power than to navigation.

(3) CLIMATE

Belgium has a temperate climate, resembling in general that of south-eastern England, but somewhat colder in winter and hotter in summer. Coastal towns like Ostend have a fairly equable temperature, but as soon as the sea-coast is left behind the changes of temperature become much more marked. Even the polder region has a severe climate. All over Flanders the winters are cold, foggy, and dull, with much frost; the summers are inclined to be sultry. The Ardennes plateau is inclement, with severe winters.

Belgium is a rainy country, but fog and drizzle are more characteristic of the Belgian climate than heavy rainfalls. All over the country the normal wet season is in the late summer and autumn, the late winter and spring being dry. The summer rains are short and sharp, and do little harm; but the heavy and continuous autumn rains often so saturate the soil as to stop agricultural work.

The winds from north to south-east are all dry, and the small rainfall in spring is due to the prevalence at that season of north-easterly winds. The worst storms are from the west and north-west; they occur especially in November, and are often accompanied by

disastrous inundations from the sea. In general westerly winds decidedly prevail; but all over the country the wind is very changeable.

Unbroken spells of any kind of weather are rare, and the climate of Belgium has been described as uniformly changeable, although on the whole it is a good climate for agriculture.

(4) RACE AND LANGUAGE

Race

Belgium is inhabited by two races, Flemings and Walloons. The Flemings belong to that 'Nordic' race which inhabits Scandinavia and the coasts of the Baltic and North Sea; the type is tall and fair, with grey eyes and a long narrow skull. The Walloons belong to the 'Alpine' race which inhabits all the central region of Europe; the type is somewhat short and heavily built, the colouring fairly dark, and the skull broad and short.

The distinction between Flemings and Walloons, however, is not primarily racial but linguistic. Belgium is roughly bisected by a line from east to west dividing it into a Flemish-speaking portion and a Walloonspeaking portion, but neither of these divisions is inhabited by a racially pure population, and most of the types, whether Flemish or Walloon, are very mixed. Therefore, of these two distinctions, the racial and the linguistic, the latter alone is of practical importance. The division between the speakers of a Teutonic and of a Romance language must of necessity have some political importance, and in Belgium it gives rise to the Flemish question, the main problem of Belgian internal politics.

Since the racial distinction is of no practical importance, it will now be ignored, and the term Flemings