a vast lake or inland sea, in Asia, about 200 miles eastward of the Caspian, between Lat. 40° and 47° N. Long. 67° and 61° E. Its form is irregularly oblong, extending from N.N.E. to S.S.W., about 290 miles by 130 from W. to E. It is separated from the Caspian by a plateau of the moderate elevation of 700 feet above that sea. Its western shores are steep and rocky; the southern and eastern are low and sandy, interspersed with marshes. Its waters are saline, but are readily drunk by horses. It abounds with the same species of fish as are found in the Caspian; and in both is found a species of seal which M. Valenciennes has lately characterized as a peculiar species, different from the Phoca Vitulina of Linnaeus and Pallas. In winter it is partially frozen, so that persons pass on the ice from the mouth of the river Sir to the town of Kourgrat. This sea receives two large rivers, the Amur, anciently the Oxus, from the west, and the Sir or Jaxartes from the east. Its name, in the language of the Kirghese-Tartars, is Aral-Denghis, or Sea of Islands, a group of which were described by the Russians in 1850 as near the middle of the sea, and have been named the Isles of Nicholas I., Constantine, Beltinghamhausen, and Lazareff. The level of the surface of this lake, compared with the Caspian and Black Sea, has not been well ascertained. Some barometrical measurements, little to be trusted, made its surface about 117 feet above the Caspian; but later, and seemingly more accurate observations, with the same instrument, reduce this difference to 34 feet. Indeed M. Von Humboldt is inclined to think that the surfaces of both seas are on the same level, and both on the same vast Aralo-Caspian depression of the Asiatic continent, which he reckons to occupy "a space of 18,000 square geographic leagues; that is to say, 900 square leagues greater than France, with a depression of about 81 English feet below the level of the Black Sea."—(Asie Centrale, ii. 311.)

ARALIACEÆ, a natural order of plants, of which the genus Panax is the chief. The Ginseng of the East is P. fruticosa, and there are several species of Panax in the New World and in Australia.