92 Mr Ainsworth cm the Physical Geography 



From their peculiarity of outline, height, and pointed summits, 

 they are fully entitled to be called mountains, though, as La- 

 mouroux ( Cours elementaire de Geogf. Phys.) would say, moun- 

 tains of the second and third order. They are one continuous 

 range, having no lateral branches; they have no pseudoor ex- 

 tinct volcanoes, or ignivomous mountains ; nor do they present 

 any mineral allied to the products of volcanic action, excepting 

 in as far as they are composed of primitive granite (Daubeny 

 cm Volcanoes). Their form varies but little : the Worcester- 

 shire Beacon, and the two most southern hills, have the most 

 acute pointed summits. The Herefordshire Beacons have been 

 altered by the labours of the Romans, digging trenches in the 

 talus for their encampment ; while the adjoining hills, which 

 will be found to be the oldest districts of the range, present 

 the most rounded tops, as being formed of more easily decom- 

 posed rock. Two of the hills are cultivated to their very sum- 

 mits : the ground is tilled by means of three-pronged forks ; 

 and there is but a very slight difference between the abundance 

 and date of ripening in the crops reared on the hills, and those 

 vegetating in the valleys below. The summits are not dis- 

 tirictly marked out from the acclivity : there are about sixteen 

 in the whole range ; a few are isolated, but more generally they 

 are connected, as in the hill between the Whyche and the 

 Sedbury and Upton road, which, rising gradually from the 

 south, forms five summits, before it reaches the highest point, 

 where it forms an insulated prominent head, which the Nor- 

 wegians, whose language is rich in names for the different 

 forms of mountains, call Kullen, while a round or less promi- 

 nent hill is Nuden (Von Buch, p. 52.). From this point it 

 afterwards descends, forming another rival series of summits, 

 to where the pass is hewn out of the solid rock for the Whyche 

 road *. The rock in this case every where rises to the north, 

 so that one of the extensive slopes lies in the direction of the 

 dip of the mountain rock, another in a direction contrary to 



• The last southern summit of this range, descending towards the Here- 

 fordshire Beacon, makes a curve round to the west, forming a table land, on 

 which houses are built, and part laid out in gardens. The Herefordshire Bea- 

 con descending with a gradual slope to the east, bends slightly round in that 

 direction ; the convexity of the first corresponding with the concavity of the 



