VEGET/TTEN 
As a rule, the trees in this district are scattered over the land in small 
clumps, giving it a park-like appearance in places, though formerly large 
areas were covered by forests, which have been cut down. 
We see, therefore, that climatic conditions are mainly responsible for 
the great contrast in the vegetation, and consequently to a large extent in 
the scenery, of various parts of Europe. This contrast has been forcibly 
described by Ruskin in the following passage in ‘ Stones of Venice,’ 
where he presents us with a picture of the continent as it might be seen 
by a bird travelling northwards : 
“Let us, for a moment, try to raise ourselves even above the level of their [Z.8., 
the swallows’] flight, and imagine the Mediterranean Ilying beneath us like an 
irregular lake, and all its ancient promontories sleeping in the sun ; here and there 
a fixed wreath of white volcano smoke, surrounded by its circle of ashes ; but for 
the most part a great peacefulness of light; Syria and Greece, Italy and Spain, 
lnid like pieces of a golden pavement into the sea-blue, chased, as we stoop nearer 
to them, with bossy beaten work of mountain chains, and glowing softly with 
terraced gardens, and flowers heavy with frankincense, mixed among masses of 
laurel, and orange, and plumy palm, that abate with their gray-green shadows 
the burning of their marble rocks, and of the ledges of porphyry glowing under 
lucent sand. "Then let us pass further towards the north, until we see the orient 
colours change gradually into @ vast belt of rainy green, where the pastures of 
Switzerland and the poplar valleys of France and the dark forests of the Danube 
and Carpathians streich from the mouths of the Loire to those of the Volga, seen 
through clefts in gray swirls of rain-cloud and flaky veils of the mist of the brooks 
spreading low along the pasture-lands : and then farther north still, to sec the earth 
heave into mighty masses of leaden rock and heathy moor, bordering with a broad 
waste of gloomy purple that belt of field and wood, and splintering into irregular 
and grisly islands amidst the northern seas, beaten by storm, and chilled by ice-drift, 
and tormented by furious pulses of contending tide, until the roots of the last forests 
fail from among the hill ravines, and the hunger of the north wind bites their peaks 
into barrenness, and, at last, the wall of ice, durable like iron, sets, death-like, its 
white teeth against us out of the npolar twilight.? 
DISTRIBUTION OF POPULATION. 
The chief factors controlling the distribution of population in Europe 
at present are climate, the relief and fertility of the land, and the distri- 
bution_of mineral wealth, especially that of coal (see p. 11). From the 
map on p. 25 it will be seen that the regions of densest population on the 
mainland of Europe: are (1) an area embracing the fertile basins of the 
Rhine, Scheldt, Somme, and Lower Seine, and possessing several coal- 
fields ; (2) an area stretching over much of Central Germany, and extend- 
ing into Austria, which is also rich in minerale , (3) the northern portion 
of Italy, which is extremely fertile.