5 o2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the Romans had done before them. The Teutonic invaders, in other 

 words, took the best agricultural lands for themselves, while the 

 Kelts were driven back into the rugged primary tract of hill and for- 

 est. Throughout the middle ages, agriculture and grazing formed 

 the staple English industries. Accordingly, during the early English 

 period, we find all the more important towns occupying the cultivable 

 valleys or gentle plains. Canterbury and Rochester, the two Kentish 

 capitals, stand in the midst of tertiary lowlands ; London, the final 

 royal city of the West Saxon kingdom, lies surrounded by a similar 

 tract ; the Oxfordshire Dorchester, first home of the Wessex kings, is 

 on the border of the rich vales of Aylesbury and Oxford ; Winches- 

 ter, their later seat, commands the valleys of the Itchin and the Test. 

 Norwich, Bury St. Edmunds, and Ipswich were important centers for 

 the East Anglian drift. Peterborough and Ely rose among the levels 

 of the Nen and the fens of the Ouse. Lincoln, Oxford, and Chippen- 

 ham stood upon the great central oolitic belt. Cambridge occupied 

 a low-lying corner of the cretaceous system. Exeter, Lichfield, and 

 Chester were girt round with the fertile triassic meadow-lands. York 

 still remained the capital of the north, and the metropolis of a king- 

 dom which long retained the foremost position held by the north 

 under Roman rule. Tbese were the great cities of England before 

 the Norman Conquest, and not one of them stands upon a primary 

 formation. All of them, save only London, have now sunk to the 

 position of mere cathedral cities, university towns, or agricultural 

 centers. But Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds, Sheffield, New- 

 castle, Bristol, and Cardiff, the great cities of to-day, are all built upon 

 primary rocks ; while the only two important modern towns which 

 rest on later strata are Birmingham, on the borders of the Black 

 Country coal-field, and Liverpool, which lives by conveying the cotton 

 of America to the great Lancashire colliery district around Manches- 

 ter, Rochdale, and Oldham. 



In the later middle ages England became a wool-stapling country. 

 Bales of wool were shipped from the Orwell for Flanders and Italy, 

 as they are now shipped from Australia for Leeds and Bradford. 

 This was the first step toward making Britain a commercial country. 

 Before the Norman Conquest it had been an essentially agricultural 

 and self-sufficing community, growing all that it required to meet its 

 own simple needs, and neither exporting nor importing goods to any 

 noticeable extent. But the wool export created a foreign trade. 

 Ports sprang up along the south and east coasts, from Dartmouth, 

 Topsham, and Lyme Regis to the now forgotten haven of Ravenspur- 

 on-Humber, the precursor of our modern Hull. This trade gave im- 

 portance to the chalk districts, high sheep-walks now the barest and 

 least inhabited portion of southeastern England. Not a single town 

 of any pretensions at present occurs in any part of the downs or 

 wolds. But Dorchester, Shaftesbury, Old and New Sarum, Winches- 



