AIN, a department of eastern France, formed from Bresse, the Pays de Dombes on the lowland and the Pays de Gex, Val romey and Bugey among the high parallel scarps of the Jura reaching south to the Rhone between Geneva and Lyons. Area 2,248 sq.m. Pop. (1931) 322,918. The name is that of the river which roughly separates the two first from the other districts, run ning north to south at first between outer hill ranks and then along the foot of the highland to join the Rhone. The western boundary is the Saone, the southern the Rhone, the eastern Switzerland and the northern the departments of Saone-et-Loire and Jura, the boundary over against the latter being closely linked with that of old between Burgundy and Franche Comte. The Pays de Gex includes some of the highest Jura scarps (Cret de la Neige ft.), the Pays de Valromey flanks on the west the deep Rhone gorge below Bellegarde, the Pays de Bugey is the south-pointing triangle of the Rhone focussing on Belley. West of the hills, Bresse occupies the fertile north part of the department and is effectively drained to the Saone, thus contrasting with the Pays de Dombes, mantled in boulder clay and possessing endless pools and marshes with, still, a good deal of consequent malarial trouble. The summers are warm in the lowland but the winters, generally, are sharp, the rainfall rises well above 1 metre per annum in the highland. The farms of Bresse are famous for pigs and poultry and the latter (especially geese) are also bred, in Dombes, which also raises horses. In the Jura hill country, pastures feed sheep and cattle from which cheese is produced, while many slopes are well forested. Bresse produces considerable cereal and other crops but the rest of the department is thus concerned mainly with stock-raising or with activities connected with its forests (of fir and oak) or with extensions of the silk industry from Lyons just beyond the south-west corner of the department, thanks to the water power available from the rivers among the gorges of the limestone country. Bourg is the capital of the department ; the three arrondissements of which take their names from Bourg, Belley (the seat of a bishop in the archiepiscopal province of Besancon) and Nantua. The departmental appeals are heard at the court of Lyons and the department is also under Lyons edu cationally. Bourg (q.v.) is a market town specially known in con nection with the famous church of Brou, wrongly described in Arnold's well known poem as being in Savoy. Among silk towns one may mention Jujurieux, Tenay, St. Rambert, St. Bernard en Bugey; Bellegarde and St. Rambert make wood pulp; and Oyon nax, a rather larger town than several of the others, 'north of Nantua, makes articles in wood and horn and is specially well known for its combs. Seyssel, on the far east, yields asphalt and many parts of the department give building stones, cement or potter's clay. There is a good tourist industry for winter sports, angling, etc., and some of the gorges and ridges are very striking; near Bellegarde, at the Perte du Rhone, that great river formerly disappeared down a fissure. Though the main P.L.M. railway from Dijon to Lyons lies west of the Saone, and so outside the depart ment, the main line from Paris to Geneva runs through Bourg and Amberieu to Bellegarde; both the Saone and the Rhone are navi gable for considerable lengths along the confines of the department.