de several modern
churches, two hospitals and a museum with collections of antiquities,
natural history, porcelain, &c. Connected with the museum is a public
library with 75,000 volumes and a number of valuable manuscripts, many
of them richly illuminated. There are English churches in the town, and
numerous boarding-schools intended for English pupils. Boulogne is the
seat of a sub-prefect, and has tribunals of first instance and of
commerce, a board of trade-arbitrators, a chamber of commerce and a
branch of the Bank of France. There are also communal colleges, a
national school of music, and schools of hydrography, commerce and
industry. Boulogne has for a long time been one of the most anglicized
of French cities; and in the tourist season a continuous stream of
English travellers reach the continent at this point.

The harbour is formed by the mouth of the Liane. Two jetties enclose a
channel leading into the river, which forms a tidal basin with a depth
at neap-tides of 24 ft. Alongside this is an extensive dock, and behind
it an inner port. There is also a tidal basin opening off the entrance
channel. The depth of water in the river-harbour is 33 ft. at
spring-tide and 24 ft. at neap-tide; in the sluice of the dock the
numbers are 29-1/2 and 23-1/2 respectively. The commerce of Boulogne
consists chiefly in the importation of jute, wool, woven goods of silk
and wool skins, threads, coal, timber, and iron and steel, and the
exportation of wine, woven goods, table fruit, potatoes and other
vegetables, skins, motor-cars, forage and cement. The average annual
value of the exports in the five years 1901-1905 was L10,953,000
(L11,704,000 in the years 1896-1900), and of the imports L6,064,000
(L7,003,000 in the years 1896-1900). From 1901 to 1905 the annual
average of vessels entered, exclusive of fishing-smacks, was 2735,
tonnage 1,747,699; and cleared 2750, tonnage 1,748,297. The total number
of passengers between Folkestone and Boulogne in 1906 was 295,000 or 49%
above the average for the years 1901-1905. These travelled by the
steamers of the South-Eastern & Chatham railway company. The liners of
the Dutch-American, Hamburg-American and other companies also call at
the port. In the extent and value of its fisheries Boulogne is exceeded
by no seaport in France. The most important branch is the
herring-fishery; next in value is the mackerel. Large quantities of
fresh fish are transmitted to Paris by railway, but an abu