Wales.—The low island of Anglesey, which is built up of the fundamental Archaean rocks, is important as a link in the main line of communication with Ireland, because it is separated from the mainland by a channel narrow enough to be bridged, and lies not far out of the straight line joining London and Dublin. The mainland of Wales rises into three main highlands, the mountain groups of North, Mid and South Wales, connected together by land over 1000 ft. in elevation in most places, but separated by valleys affording easy highways. The streams of the southern and western slopes are short and many, flowing directly to the Bristol Channel and the Irish Sea; but the no less numerous streams of the eastern slopes gather themselves into three river systems, and reach the sea as the Dee, the Severn and the Wye. The mountain group of North Wales is the largest and loftiest; its scenery resembles that of the Scottish Highlands because of the juxtaposition of ancient Palaeozoic rocks—Cambrian and Ordovician, often altered into slate—and contemporaneous volcanic outbursts and igneous intrusions. Here rises the peak of Snowdon (3560 ft.), the culminating point of South Britain, and near it half a dozen summits exceed 3000 ft., while Cader Idris, farther south, though slightly lower, presents a singularly imposing outline. The mild winter climate has fringed the coast with seaside resorts, the rugged heights attract tourists in summer, and the vast masses of slate have given rise to the largest slate quarries in the world. The heavy rainfall of the upper valleys unfits them for agriculture, and the farms are poor. There are several lakes: that of Bala being the largest, except the old lake of Vyrnwy, reconstituted artificially to store the rainfall for the water-supply of Liverpool, 68 m. distant. The Vyrnwy is tributary to the Severn; but north of it the streams gather into the Dee, and flow eventually northward. Mid Wales is built up, for the most part, of Silurian or Ordovician rocks, practically free from igneous intrusions except in the south-west. There the resistance of a series of igneous dykes gives prominence to the Pembroke peninsula, in which the fine fjord-like harbour of Milford Haven lies far out towards the Atlantic. The coast north of Pembroke and Merioneth has been worked into the grand sweep of Cardigan Bay, its surface carved into gently rounded hills, green with rich grass, which sweep downward into wide rounded valleys. Plinlimmon (2468 ft.) is the highest of the hills, and forms a sort of hydrographic centre for the group, as from its eastern base the Severn and the Wye take their rise—the former describing a wide curve to east and south, the latter forming a chord to the arc in its southward course. Mid Wales is mainly a pastoral country, and very thinly peopled. A group of artificial lakes, one of them exceeded in area only by Windermere, has been formed in the valley of the Elan, a tributary of the Wye, for the supply of water to Birmingham. The group of heights of South Wales, running on the whole from west to east, marks the outcrops of the Old Red Sandstone and Carboniferous strata which lie within a vast syncline of the Silurian rocks. The Brecon Beacons of Old Red Sandstone are the highest (2907 ft.), but the Black Mountain bears a number of picturesque summits carved out of Millstone Grit and Carboniferous Limestone, which rise frequently over 2000 ft. Throughout Hereford, and in part of Monmouthshire, the Old Red Sandstone sinks to a great undulating plain, traversed by the exquisite windings of the Wye, and forming some of the richest pasture and fruit lands of England. This plain formed an easy passage from south to north, and since the time of the Romans was a strategical line of the greatest importance, a fact which has left its traces on the present distribution of towns. Around the western and northern edge of the Old Red Sandstone plain the underlying Silurian rocks (and even the Cambrian and Archaean in places) have been bent up so that their edges form hills of singular abruptness and beauty. Of these are the Malvern Hills, east of Hereford, and in particular the hills of Shropshire. Wenlock Edge, running from south-west to north-east, is an escarpment of Silurian limestone, while the broad upland of Long Mynd, nearly parallel to it on the north, is a mass of Archaean rock. The Wrekin, the Caradoc and Cardington Hills are isolated outbursts of pre-Cambrian volcanic rocks. The outer rim of the Welsh area contains a broken series of coal-fields, where patches of Carboniferous strata come to the surface on the edge of the New Red Sandstone plain. Such are the coal-fields of Flint in the north, the Forest of Wyre and the Forest of Dean, close to the Severn, on the east. The great coal-field on the south is a perfect example of a synclinal basin, the Millstone Grit and Carboniferous Limestone which underlie the Coal Measures appearing all round the margin. This coal-field occupies practically the whole of Glamorgan and part of Monmouth, and its surface slopes from the Black Mountain and Brecon Beacons to the sea as a gently inclined plateau, scored by deep valleys draining south. Each chief valley has a railway connecting a string of mining villages, and converging seaward to the busy ports of Newport, Cardiff and Barry (a town created on a sandy island by the excavation of a great dock to form an outlet for the mines). In the north of the field, where the limestone crops out and supplies the necessary flux, Merthyr Tydfil has become great through iron-smelting; and in the west Swansea is the chief centre in the world for copper and tin smelting. The unity and ruggedness of the highlands of Wales have proved sufficient to isolate the people from those of the rest of South Britain, and to preserve a purely Celtic race, still very largely of Celtic speech.

Cornwall and Devon.—The peninsula of Cornwall and Devon may be looked upon as formed from a synclinal trough of Devonian rocks, which appear as plateaus on the north and south, while the centre is occupied by Lower Carboniferous strata at a lower level. The northern coast, bordering the Bristol Channel, is steep, with picturesque cliffs and deep bays or short valleys running into the high land, each occupied by a little seaside town or village. The plateau culminates in the barren heathy upland of Exmoor, which slopes gently southward from a general elevation of 1600 ft., and is almost without inhabitants. The Carboniferous rocks of the centre form a soil which produces rich pasture under the heavy rainfall and remarkably mild and equable temperature, forming a great cattle-raising district. The Devonian strata on the south do not form such lofty elevations as those on the north, and are in consequence, like the plain of Hereford, very fertile and peculiarly adapted for fruit-growing and cider-making. The remarkable features of the scenery of South Devon and Cornwall are due to a narrow band of Archaean rock which appears in the south of the peninsulas terminating in Lizard Head and Start Point, and to huge masses of granite and other eruptive rocks which form a series of great bosses and dykes. The largest granite boss gives relief to the wild upland of Dartmoor, culminating in High Willhays and Yes Tor. The clay resulting from the weathering of the Dartmoor granite has formed marshes and peat bogs, and the desolation of the district has been emphasized by the establishment in its midst of a great convict prison, and in its northern portion of a range for artillery practice. The Tamar flows from north to south on the Devonian plain, which lies between Dartmoor on the east and the similar granitic boss of Bodmin Moor (where Brown Willy rises to 1345 ft.) on the west. There are several smaller granite bosses, of which the mass of Land’s End is the most important. Most of the Lizard peninsula, the only part of England stretching south of 50° N., is a mass of serpentine. The great variety of the rocks which meet the sea along the south of Cornwall and Devon has led to the formation of a singularly picturesque coast—the headlands being carved from the hardest igneous rocks, the bays cut back in the softer Devonian strata. The fjord-like inlets of Falmouth, Plymouth and Dartmouth are splendid natural harbours, which would have developed great commercial ports but for their remoteness from the centres of commerce and manufactures. China clay from the decomposing granites; tin and copper ore, once abounding at the contacts between the granite and the rocks it pierced, were the former staples of wealth, and the mining largely accounts for the exceptional density of population in Cornwall. Fishing has always been important, the numerous good harbours giving security to fishing-boats; and the fact that this coast is the mildest and almost the sunniest, though by no means the driest, part of Great Britain has led to the establishment of many health resorts, of which Torquay is the chief. The old Cornish language of the Celtic stock became extinct only in the 18th century, and the Cornish character remains as a heritage of the time when the land had leisure to mould the life and the habits of the man. Projecting farthest of all England into the Atlantic, it is not surprising that the West country has supplied a large proportion of the great naval commanders in British history, and of the crews of the navy.

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Between the separate uplands there extends a plain of Permian and Triassic rocks, which may conveniently be considered as an intermediate zone between the two main divisions. To the eye it forms an almost continuous plain with The midland plain. the belt of Lias clays, which is the outer border of the Eastern Division; for although a low escarpment marks the line of junction, and seems to influence the direction of the main rivers, there is only one plain so far as regards free movement over its surface and the construction of canals, roads and railways. The plain usually forms a distinct border along the landward margins of the uplands of more ancient rock, though to the east of the Cornwall-Devon peninsula it is not very clear, and its continuity in other places is broken by inliers of the more ancient rocks, which everywhere underlie it. One such outcrop of Carboniferous Limestone in the south forms the Mendip Hills; another of the Coal Measures increases the importance of Bristol, where it stands at the head of navigation on the southern Avon. In the north-west a tongue of the Red rocks forms the Eden valley, separating the Lake District from the Pennine Chain, with Carlisle as its central town. Farther south, these rocks form the low coastal belt of Lancashire, edged with the longest stretches of blown sand in England, and dotted here and there with pleasure towns, like Blackpool and Southport. The plain sweeps round south of the Lancashire coal-field, forms the valley of the Mersey from Stockport to the sea, and farther south in Cheshire the salt-bearing beds of the Keuper marls give rise to a characteristic industry. The plain extends through Staffordshire and Worcester, forming the lower valley of the Severn. The greater part of Manchester, all Liverpool and Birkenhead, and innumerable busy towns of medium size, which in other parts of England would rank as great centres of population, stand on this soil. Its flat surface and low level facilitate the construction of railways and canals, which form a closer network over it than in other parts of the country. The great junction of Crewe, where railways from south-east, south-west, east, west and north converge, is thus explained. South of the Pennines, the Red rocks extend eastward in a great sweep through the south of Derbyshire, Warwick, the west of Leicestershire, and the east of Nottingham, their margin being approximately marked by the Avon, flowing south-west, and the Soar and Trent, flowing north-east. South and east of these streams the very similar country is on the Lias clay. Several small coal-fields rise through the Red rocks—the largest, between Stafford and Birmingham, forms the famous “Black Country,” with Wolverhampton and Dudley as centres, where the manufacture of iron has preserved a historic continuity, for the great Forest of Arden supplied charcoal until the new fuel from the pits took its place. This coal-field, ministering to the multifarious metal manufactures of Birmingham, constitutes the centre of the Midlands. Smaller patches of the Coal Measures appear near Tamworth and Burton, while deep shafts have been sunk in many places through the overlying Triassic strata to the coal below, thus extending the mining and manufacturing area beyond the actual outcrop of the Coal Measures. A few small outcrops occur where still more ancient strata have been raised to the surface, as, for instance, in Charnwood Forest, where the Archaean rocks, with intrusions of granite, create a patch of highland scenery in the very heart of the English plain; and in the Lickey Hills, near Birmingham, where the prominent features are due to volcanic rocks of very ancient date. The “Waterstones,” or Lower Keuper Sandstones,—forming gentle elevations above the softer marls, and usually charged with an abundant supply of water, which can be reached by wells,—form the site of many towns, such as Birmingham, Warwick and Lichfield, and of very numerous villages. The plain as a whole is fertile and undulating, rich in woods and richer in pasture: the very heart of rural England. Cattle-grazing is the chief farm industry in the west, sheep and horse-rearing in the east; the prevalence of the prefix “Market” in the names of the rural towns is noticeable in this respect. The manufacture of woollen and leather goods is a natural result of the raising of live stock; Leicester, Coventry and Nottingham are manufacturing towns of the region. The historic castles, the sites of ancient battles, and the innumerable mansions of the wealthy, combine to give to central England a certain aesthetic interest which the more purely manufacturing districts of the west and north fail to inspire. The midland plain curves northward between the outcrop of the Dolomite on the west and the Oolitic heights on the east. It sinks lowest where the estuary of the Humber gathers in its main tributaries, and the greater part of the surface is covered with recent alluvial deposits. The Trent runs north in the southern half of this plain, the Ouse runs south through the northern half, which is known as the Vale of York, lying low between the Pennine heights on the west and the Yorkshire moors on the east. Where the plain reaches the sea, the soft rocks are cut back into the estuary of the Tees, and there Middlesbrough stands at the base of the Moors. The quiet beauty of the rural country in the south, where the barren Bunter pebble-beds have never invited agriculture, and where considerable vestiges of the old woodland still remain in and near Sherwood Forest, has attracted so many seats of the landed aristocracy as to earn for that part the familiar name of “the Dukeries.” The central position of York in the north made it the capital of Roman Britain in ancient times, and an important railway junction in our own.

Five natural regions may be distinguished in the Eastern Division of England, by no means so sharply marked off as those of the west, but nevertheless quite clearly characterized. The first is the Jurassic Belt, sweeping along the border of the The eastern division. Triassic plain from the south coast at the mouth of the Exe to the east coast at the mouth of the Tees. This is closely followed on the south-east by the Chalk country, occupying the whole of the rest of England except where the Tertiary Basins of London and Hampshire cover it, where the depression of the Fenland carries it out of sight, and where the lower rocks of the Weald break through it. Thus the Chalk appears to run in four diverging fingers from the centre or palm on Salisbury Plain, other formations lying wedge-like between them. Various lines of reasoning unite in proving that the Mesozoic rocks of the south rest upon a mass of Palaeozoic rocks, which lies at no very great depth beneath the surface of the anticlinal axis running from the Bristol Channel to the Strait of Dover. The theoretical conclusion has been confirmed by the discovery of Coal Measures, with workable coal seams, at Dover at a depth of 2000 ft. below the surface.

The Eastern Division is built up of parallel strata, the edges of the harder rocks forming escarpments, the sheets of clay forming plains; and on this account similar features are repeated in each of the successive geological formations. The rivers exhibit a remarkably close relation to the geological structure, and thus contrast with the rivers of the Western Division. There are two main classes of river-course—those flowing down the dip-slopes at right angles to the strike, and cutting through opposed escarpments by deep valleys, and those following the line of strike along a bed of easily eroded rock. A third class of streams, tributary to the second, flows down the steep face of the escarpments. By the study of the adjustment of these rivers to their valleys, and of the relation of the valleys to the general structure, Professor W. M. Davis has elaborated a theory of river classification, and a scheme of the origin of surface-features which is attractive in its simplicity. The Thames is the one great river of the division, rising on the Jurassic Belt, crossing the Chalk country, and finishing its course in the Tertiary London Basin, towards which, in its prevailing west-to-east direction, it draws its tributaries from north and south. The other rivers are shorter, and flow either to the North Sea on the east, or to the English Channel on the south. With the exception of the Humber, they all rise and pursue their whole course within the limits of the Eastern Division itself.

The Eastern Division is the richest part of England agriculturally, it is the part most accessible to trade with the Continent, and that least adapted for providing refuges for small bodies of men in conflict with powerful invaders. Hence the latest of the conquerors, the Saxon and other Germanic tribes, obtained an easy mastery, and spread over the whole country, holding their own against marauding Northmen, except on the northern part of the east coast; and even after the political conquest by the Normans, continuing to form the great mass of the population, though influenced not a little by the fresh blood and new ideas they had assimilated. The present population is so distributed as to show remarkable dependence on the physical features. The chalk and limestone plateaus are usually almost without inhabitants, and the villages of these districts occur grouped together in long strings, either in drift-floored valleys in the calcareous plateaus, or along the exposure of some favoured stratum at their base. In almost every case the plain along the foot of an escarpment bears a line of villages and small towns, and on a good map of density of population the lines of the geological map may be readily discerned.

The Jurassic Belt.—The Jurassic belt is occupied by the counties of Gloucester, Oxford, Buckingham, Bedford, Northampton, Huntingdon, Rutland, Lincoln and the North Riding of Yorkshire. The rocks of the belt may be divided into two main groups: the Lias beds, which come next to the Triassic plain, and the Oolitic beds. Each group is made up of an alternation of soft marls or clays and hard limestones or sandstones. The low escarpments of the harder beds of the Lias are the real, though often scarcely perceptible, boundary between the Triassic plain and the Jurassic belt. They run along the right bank of the Trent in its northward course to the Humber, and similarly direct the course of the Avon southward to the Severn. The great feature of the region is the long line of the Oolitic escarpment, formed in different places by the edges of different beds of rock. The escarpment runs north from Portland Island on the English Channel, curves north-eastward as the Cotteswold Hills, rising abruptly from the Severn plain to heights of over 1000 ft.; it sinks to insignificance in the Midland counties, is again clearly marked in Lincolnshire, and rises in the North Yorkshire moors to its maximum height of over 1500 ft. Steep towards the west, where it overlooks the low Lias plain as the Oolitic escarpment, the land falls very gently in slopes of Oxford Clay towards the Cretaceous escarpments on the south and east. Throughout its whole extent it yields valuable building-stone, and in the Yorkshire moors the great abundance of iron ore has created the prosperity of Middlesbrough, on the plain below. The Lias plain is rich grazing country, the Oxford Clay forms valuable agricultural land, yielding heavy crops of wheat. The towns of the belt are comparatively small, not one attains a population of 75,000, and the favourite site is on the Lias plain below the great escarpment. They are for the most part typical rural market-towns, the manufactures, where such exist, being usually of agricultural machinery, or woollen and leather goods. Bath, Gloucester, Oxford, Northampton, Bedford, Rugby, Lincoln and Scarborough are amongst the chief. North of the gap in the low escarpment in which the town of Lincoln centres, a close fringe of villages borders the escarpment on the west; and throughout the belt the alternations of clay and hard rock are reflected in the grouping of population.

The Chalk Country.—The dominating surface-feature formed by the Cretaceous rocks is the Chalk escarpment, the northern edge of the great sheet of chalk that once spread continuously over the whole south-east. It appears as a series of rounded hills of no great elevation, running in a curve from the mouth of the Axe to Flamborough Head, roughly parallel with the Oolitic escarpment. Successive portions of this line of heights are known as the Western Downs, the White Horse Hills, the Chiltern Hills, the East Anglian Ridge, the Lincolnshire Wolds and the Yorkshire Wolds. The rivers from the gentle southern slopes of the Oolitic heights pass by deep valleys through the Chalk escarpments, and flow on to the Tertiary plains within. The typical scenery of the Chalk country is unrelieved by small streams of running water; the hills rise into rounded downs, often capped with fine clumps of beech, and usually covered with thin turf, affording pasture for sheep. The chalk, when exposed on the surface, is an excellent foundation for roads, and the lines of many of the Roman “streets” were probably determined by this fact. The Chalk country extends over part of Dorset, most of Wiltshire, a considerable portion of Hampshire and Oxfordshire, most of Hertfordshire and Cambridgeshire, the west of Norfolk and Suffolk, the east of Lincolnshire, and the East Riding of Yorkshire. From the upland of Salisbury Plain, which corresponds to the axis of the anticline marking the centre of the double fold into which the strata of the south of England have been thrown, the great Chalk escarpment runs north-eastward; fingers of Chalk run eastward one each side of the Weald, forming the North and South Downs, while the southern edge of the Chalk sheet appears from beneath the Tertiary strata at several places on the south coast, and especially in the Isle of Wight. Flamborough Head, the South Foreland, Beachy Head and the Needles are examples of the fine scenery into which chalk weathers where it fronts the sea, and these white cliffs gave to the island its early name of Albion. The Chalk is everywhere very thinly peopled, except where it is thickly covered with boulder clay, and so becomes fertile, or where it is scored by drift-filled valleys, in which the small towns and villages are dotted along the high roads. The thickest covering of drift is found in the Holderness district of Yorkshire, where, from the chalk cliffs of Flamborough Head to the sandspit of Spurn Point, the whole coast is formed of boulder-clay resting on chalk. Of the few towns in the Chalk country, the interest of which is largely historical or scholastic, Salisbury, Winchester, Marlborough and Cambridge are the most distinguished. Reading flourishes from its position on the edge of the London Tertiary Basin, Croydon is a suburb of London, and Hull, though on the Chalk, derives its importance from the Humber estuary, which cuts through the Chalk and the Jurassic belts, to drain the Triassic plain and the Pennine region. The narrow strip of Greensands appearing from beneath the Chalk escarpment on its northern side is crowded with small towns and villages on account of the plentiful water-supply. The distinction between the low grounds of the Jurassic belt and the Chalk country is not always very apparent on the surface, and from the historic point of view it is important to recognize the individuality of the Eastern plain which extends from the Vale of York across the Humber and the Wash into Essex. The Eastern plain thus includes a portion of the Triassic plain in the north, a portion of the Jurassic and Chalk belts in the middle, and a portion of the Tertiary plain of the London Basin in the south.