NEVA

NEVA, a river of Russia, flows from Lake Ladoga to the Baltic, into which it discharges itself by several mouths at St Petersburg, after a course of about 40 miles. It forms the only outlet of the four lakes of Onega, Ilmen, Saima, and Ladoga; and owing to the vast extent of these sheets of water, that of Ladoga being the largest in Europe, it conveys an immense quantity of water to the sea. Its average breadth is 1500 feet, its depth about 50 feet; and, flowing with a velocity of 37 inches per second, it has been calculated to carry to the Gulf of Finland 116,000 cubic feet of water in a second. Such a body of water, moving at such a rate, would be exempt from the influences of frost, were it not for the long continuance of the winter, and the quantities of ice which are drifted down from the lakes by the violent storms to which they are subject. Owing to the combination of these circumstances, the river is generally frozen for four or five months in the year. The following are the dates of the opening and closing of the river by ice for each year from 1851 to 1856:—