hills and valleys, thickly overspread with towns
and cities, and in many parts crowded with a
manufacturing population, whose industry is
maintained by the coal with which the strata of
these districts are abundantly interspersed.*
A third foreigner might travel from the
coast of Dorset to the coast of Yorkshire, over
elevated plains of oolitic limestone, or of chalk ;
without a single mountain, or mine, or coal-pit,
or any important manufactory, and occupied by
a population almost exclusively agricultural.
Let us suppose these three strangers to meet at
the termination of their journeys, and to compare
their respective observations; how different
would be the results to which each would have
arrived, respecting the actual condition of Great
Britain. The first would represent it as a thinly
peopled region of barren mountains; the second,
as a land of rich pastures, crowded with
* It may be seen, in any correct geological map of England,
that the following important and populous towns are placed
upon strata belonging to the single geological formation of the
new red sa n d s to n eE x e te r , Bristol, Worcester, Warwick, Birmingham,
Lichfield, Coventry, Leicester, Nottingham, Derby,
Stafford, Shrewsbury, Chester, Liverpool, Warrington, Manchester,
Preston, York, and Carlisle. The population of these
nineteen towns, by the census of 1830, exceeded a million.
The most convenient small map to which I can refer my
readers, in illustration of this and other parts of the present
essay, is the single sheet, reduced by Gardner from Mr.
Greenough’s large map of England, published by the Geological
Society of London.
a flourishing population of manufacturers; the
third, as a great corn field, occupied by persons
almost exclusively engaged in the pursuits of
husbandry.
These dissimilar conditions of three great
divisions of our country, result from differences
in the geological structure of the districts
through which our three travellers have been
conducted. The first will have seen only those
north-western portions of Britain, that are composed
of rocks belonging to the primary and
transition series : the second will have traversed
those fertile portions of the new red sandstone
formation which are made up of the detritus
of more ancient rocks, and have beneath, and
near them, inestimable treasures of mineral coal :
the third will have confined his route to wolds
of limestone, and downs of chalk, which are
best adapted for sheep-walks, and the production
of corn.*
Hence it appears that the numerical amount
* The road from Bath through Cirencester and Oxford to
Buckingham, and thence by Kettering and Stamford to Lincoln,
affords a good example of the unvaried sameness in the features
and culture of the soil, and in the occupations of the people,
that attends the line of direction, in which the oolite formation
crosses England from Weymouth to Scarborough.
The road from Dorchester, by Blandford and Salisbury, to
Andover and Basingstoke, or from Dunstable to Royston, Cam-
bridge, and Newmarket, affords similar examples of the dull uniformity
that we observe in a journey along the line of bearing