had settled on the western coast of northern Britain distant at one part only 13 miles from Ireland - and in the end gave the name of Scotland to the whole northern part of the island.

The changes of boundary between England and Wales began with the great Welsh campaign of Harold in 1063. All the border shires, Cheshire, Shropshire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire seem to have been enlarged at this period. The English border stretched to the Conwy in the north and to the Usk in the south. But part of this territory appears to have been recovered by the Welsh princes, while part passed into the great march district of England and Wales, under the rule of the Lords Marchers. The gradual conquest of South Wales began under the Conqueror and was continued by his sons; but it was more the work of private adventurers than of the kings themselves. The lands of Morganwg, Breheiniog, Dyfed and Ceredigion, answering nearly to the modern South Wales, were gradually subdued. In some districts, especially in the southern part of the present Pembrokeshire, the Britons were actually driven out, and the land was settled by Flemish colonists, the latest of the Teutonic settlements in Britain. Elsewhere Norman lords, with Norman, English and Flemish followers, held the towns and the more level country, while the Welsh kept up a semi-independence in the western mountains. In North Wales, meanwhile, native princes still ruled as vassals of the English king till the war of Edward I. In 1277 the vassal prince was compelled to relinquish again the territory east of the Conwy to his overlord. The final conquest followed in 1282, but complete incorporation with England did not take place until the reign of Henry VIII, 253 years later. During this long interim North and South Wales remained a separate dominion, giving the princely title to the eldest son of the English king, a dynastic custom that still exists to-day. Some shires were formed or remodeled, new towns founded, and the border districts maintained under the anomalous jurisdiction of the Marchers till the ultimate absorption in 1535. Thirteen new counties were then formed and some districts added or restored to the border shires of England. One of the new counties, Monmouthshire, was added to an English circuit under Charles II, and has since been considered an English county. Curiously enough, it frequently appears included with Wales even in official publications at the present time.

With the exception of these new creations, all the existing shires of England were in being at the time of the Norman Conquest, save those of Lancaster, Cumberland, Westmoreland and Rutland. The boundaries were not always exactly the same as at present, but the differences are commonly slight and of mere local interest. As they stood at the Conquest the shires were of two classes: some were old kingdoms or principalities which still kept their names and boundaries as shires, while others seem to have been mapped out afresh when the land was recovered from the Danes. All the shires on the Welsh border stretched further west in 'Domesday' than they do now. On the Scottish border Westmoreland and Cumberland were formed

out of the Cumbrian conquest of William II and enlarged by territory which appears in 'Domesday' as part of Yorkshire. Lancashire was made up of lands taken from Yorkshire and Cheshire, the river Ribble forming the older boundary of those shires. The older divisions are marked by the boundaries of the dioceses of York, Carlisle and Litchfield or Chester, as they stood until the changes under Henry VIII. In central England the only change was the formation of the smallest shire - Rutland-out of the Domesday district of Rutland, an appendage to Nottinghamshire, enlarged by a small part of what was then Northamptonshire.

If one were to trace these changes over a series of ancient and modern maps, they would reveal but very little alteration of boundaries in the island since the 11th century. The land, as a whole has not been mapped out afresh since the 10th century. While a map of France or Germany in the 11th century, or even in the 18th, would be useless for immediate practical purposes, a map of England in the days of Domesday (1085-86) hardly differs from the map of England as we know it to-day. The only changes of any import-and they are neither many nor great are the shires on the Welsh and Scottish borders. William the Conqueror put the finishing stroke to the work of Egbert and made England forever one. By uniting that country under the same ruler as Normandy (namely, himself), he led her into the general current of continental affairs, and gave her a European position such as she had never held under her native kings.

Although there have been but slight changes in the boundaries of England itself within a thousand years, the extra-territorial expansion of that country beyond the seas constitutes the most remarkable phenomenon in the world's history. England alone is about the size of Rumania, less than a fourth of France or of Germany, and but little larger than the State of New York. England and Wales together are not equal in area to the State of Georgia, nor a quarter the size of Texas. There are 29 States or Territories in the Union each larger than England, and several much larger than the whole United Kingdom put together. Whilst the area of the British Isles is less than onefour hundredth part of the land surface of the globe, the colonies and dependencies which England has acquired within about 300 years cover something like one-fifth of the earth, or 11,351,046 square miles, with a population estimated at over 40,000,000.

The

Topography. The chief indentations are: On the east, the Humber, the Wash and the Thames estuary; on the west, the Solway Firth, Morecambe Bay, Cardigan Bay and the Bristol Channel; those on the south are less prominent, though including some useful harbors. greater part of the coast consists of cliffs, in some places clayey, in others rocky and sometimes jutting out into bold, lofty and precipitous headlands, as at Whitby and Flamborough Head on the east, Beachy Head, the Isle of Portland, the Lizard and Land's End on the south and southwest, Saint David's Head and Saint Bees Head on the west. The most extensive stretches of flat coast are on the east, in the county of Lincoln, and from the south part