500 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the industrious Jat peasantry work ceaselessly day and night by re- 

 lays, each family raising the precious water to fertilize its own little 

 plot, for a stated number of hours out of the twenty-four. But such 

 industry presupposes a long training in more fertile soils, and a heavy 

 pressure of population on all the earlier occupied alluvial loAvlands. So 

 too in Britain, a primitive agriculture would have despaired of raising 

 corn upon the bare sides of the Chiltern Hills, and only modern scien- 

 tific farming has turned the boggy upland expanses of the Cheviots 

 and Lammermoor into nourishing tillage. Accordingly, we might 

 expect that the growth of agriculture would bring geology and human 

 development into still closer connection within our island. 



Geologically, Britain falls into two well-marked divisions the 

 northwestern primary tract, and the southeastern secondary and ter- 

 tiary region. The boundary between them may be roughly marked 

 off by a line running from the mouth of the Tees to the mouth of the 

 Exe. Northwestward of this line we have the whole of Scotland, the 

 Pennine region of England, the Welsh mountain system, and the 

 peninsula of Devonshire and Cornwall. Southeastward we have the 

 whole level country of England, comprising the plain of York, the 

 great central plateau, the Fen district and the eastern counties, the 

 valley of the Thames, and the watershed of the south coast. 



Now, it is not too much to say, that by far the most fundamental 

 fact in the annals of Britain, since the dawn of written history, is the 

 great revolution which has exactly reversed the relative importance 

 of these two divisions. Yet what are called histories of England at 

 the present day utterly ignore that revolution. In the Roman period 

 and the middle ages, the most valuable and most populous part of 

 Britain was the secondary and tertiary lowland : at the present day, 

 the most valuable and most populous part is the primary division to 

 the north and west. And what gives this revolution its greatest eth- 

 nological interest is the fact that while the secondary tract roughly 

 corresponds with the Teutonic portion of Britain, the primary tract 

 roughly corresponds with the Keltic or semi-Keltic portion. 



As early as the time when Caius Caesar, the Dictator, landed in our 

 island, these two great divisions had already shown their differentiat- 

 ing characteristics. The Britons of the southeastern country, consist- 

 ing of open and easily cultivable plains, had advanced to the agricul- 

 tural stage, and were comparatively dense in their pressure upon soil, 

 with fixed habitations and considerable towns. The northwestern 

 tribes were still pastoral nomads or hunters, dwelling in movable vil- 

 lages, and having mere empty forts on the hill-tops, to which the 

 whole population retreated in case of invasion. The difference thus 

 expressed continued more or less marked throughout the whole his- 

 torical period, until the use of coal effected that extraordinary revolu- 

 tion by which primary and industrial Britain has at length asserted 

 its superiority to the level agricultural southeast. 



