AUSTRIA, LOWER, or "Austria below the river Enns," formerly a province of Austria and now known as the Niederdonati Gaze of Greater Germany, is divided by the Danube into a north ern more agricultural and a southern more industrial half, and each may be further subdivided into structural regions with dis tinct economic contrasts. The northern half falls naturally into two districts, almost equal in area, the "Waldviertel" and the "Weinviertel." The former coincides with the extension of the Bohemian and Moravian igneous plateau which here slopes gently from the Weinsberger Wald (3.478ft.) to the Manhartsberg 7 58f t.) . Westward it resembles the parent mass of Upper Austria, but towards the east lithological and climatic changes cause the forest to be confined to the deep, winding valleys, and the high tableland shows an increase of cultivation and a greater number of large villages while in the north-west corner small textile and glass factories raise the density of settlement. The long north-east-south-west scarp of the Manhartsberg falls quickly to the wide valleys and soft, swelling hills of the "Wein viertel." Here all sunny slopes are terraced with vineyards while a mantle of Tertiary sediments and loess, and ease of movement, combine to encourage cultivation and settlement. Only in the centre, where forested offshoots of the Alps, e.g., the Leisser moun tains (1,615 f t.) , form a connecting link with the Carpathians, is the network of fields and routes broken. East of these spurs the land sinks to the alluvial basin of Vienna and to the intensively cultivated valley of the Morava along which stretches a continu ation of the Moravian sugar-beet belt.
South of the Danube three zones may be distinguished, viz.: (r) a narrow and hilly prolongation of the Alpine Foreland, (2) the north-eastern extension of the Flysch and Limestone Alps cul minating in the Wienerwald, and (3) the southern half of the Vienna basin thrust as a wedge south-west beyond Wiener Neustadt. The Foreland is more hilly than in Upper Austria but maintains its importance for stock-farming and offers little hindrance to communication. Rail and road avoid the river which between Grein and Ybbs and again between Melk and Krems (the "Wachau") follows a deep, tortuous course between steep walls of crystalline rock. Crowned by ruined castles and terraced with vineyards and orchards, these gorges are reminis cent of the Rhine but lack its volume of industry and traffic though water-power and communications have stimulated the former at Krems and Waidhofen. East of the Traisen, a right bank tributary of the Danube, the isolated farmsteads and small ham lets surrounded by orchards typical of the West Foreland are replaced by large nucleated villages of Germanic form as in the "Waldviertel" and "Weinviertel." The forested Alpine promon tory thrusts a thinly-peopled zone between the Foreland and the busy Vienna basin where agriculture and industry mingle. Settle ment is most dense in the western half of the basin, i.e., in asso ciation with the great route to the Semmering Pass and along the tectonic thermal "fall line" of separation from the Alps, where rich vineyards cover the slopes and prosperous spas and factories, fed by local waterpower, line the foot of the scarp. East and north the basin is floored with impermeable strata favouring maize, wheat and sugar-beet ; southward permeable grav els cause a change to woodland. But the overwhelming aspect of human activity is industry; more than half of the manufacture of Austria is concentrated in Vienna (q.v.) and its basin, par ticularly between the capital and Wiener-Neustadt. Smaller cen tres have arisen where, as on the Foreland, local advantages of situation or resources of materials and power assure their pros perity; the paper, iron and cellulose factories of the Ybbs and Erlauf valleys and the cotton-spinning of St. Polten are examples. (See also AUSTRIA and VIENNA.)