[Other articles on Manufacturing Industries will be found in Appendix.—Ed.]
PART III.
GEOLOGY AND PHYSIOGRAPHY.
(BIRMINGHAM DISTRICT.)
EDITED BY PROFESSOR CHAS. LAPWORTH, LL.D., F.G.S.
PHYSIOGRAPHY.
The town of Birmingham lies almost in the exact geographical centre of England and Wales, midway between sea and sea. Its distance in a straight line from the three nearest sea-ports on the opposite sides of the island, Liverpool, Boston, and Bristol, is about 85 miles in each case, while its distance from London and Southampton is only a few miles more.
The main watershed of Southern Britain, which commences to the northward in the Pennine Range and divides the rivers which flow eastward into the German Ocean from those which drain westward into the Irish Sea and the Bristol Channel, enters upon the Birmingham District from the northward by way of Cannock Chase, crosses the “Black Country” about six miles to the west of Birmingham, and passes out of the district to the southward through the Lickey Hills, round the headwaters of the Avon to the Edge Hills and the Cotswolds.
The town of Birmingham and its immediate neighbourhood, is drained by the brooklets which unite to form the river Tame, the first of the southern tributaries of the Trent. Thus, physiographically speaking, Birmingham lies well within the basin of the Humber. To the west of the watershed of Dudley and the Lickey, the rivers of the district have a short and rapid descent to the main stream of the Severn; to the south eastward, they glide gently across the Midland Plain to its tributary—the soft-flowing Avon.