Let's take a look at the following examples of the use of the definite article taken from the press. The anthropologist William Harding is to lead an expedition to Easter Island and the Maldives.

The Duke of Edinburgh and the Prince of Wales were presented to Queen Sophia of the Netherlands during a three-day official visit. The salmon fishing in Scotland is famous -so famous tha underwater fishing has been banned for fear of poachers.

Eliot Seidelman was a child. By the age of five he could play chess like a Grand Master and the violin like a god. Acid rain is largely responsible for environmental pollution, as water samples taken from Lake Constance and the Lake of Geneva clearly show.

The England of Charles Dickens can still be found in certain areas of London. The English and the French finally decided to build a tunnel under the Channel -two hundred years after the original idea.

American wine -and especially the wines of California- have recently made inroads into the European market. (3)

Edgar Allan Poe's work is the best example ob literary fascination with the supernatural. Hill Hamilton, the Australian trade-union boss, was renowned as a tough negotiator. He also had a glass eye that was so realistic that few people were able to tell it apart from the real one.

During a particulary difficult set of talks with the secretary of State for Industry, (6) Hamilton agreed to give up a certain demand on one condition: that the Secretary should tell him which was the glass eye.

The left one, replied the politician, without hesitation. Hamilton was nonplussed- Correct, he said, but how did you know?

Easy, replied his opponent, it's so much kinder than the other.