EET. J. C. CLUTTEKBTTCK PEODUCTS OF nEETFORDSHTEE. 45 



still no doubt furnishes the raw material for the manufacture of 

 malt, the extensive trade in -which is witnessed by the malt- 

 houses of Ware, Bishop's Stortford, and other places. 



The building materials of Hertfordshire are furnished by the 

 Chalk as lime ; and the clays of the Tertiary formation, as at 

 Bushey, for the manufacture of bricks ; but we must not forget 

 that the clunch, or lower bed of the Chalk, of which the Abbey, 

 now Cathedral, of St. Alban's, and well-nigh all the churches in 

 the county, are more or less built, is fouud on the northern limits 

 of the county. 



It should be remembered that it is to the geological condition of 

 the county that its beautiful streams are due. These drove the 

 mills of our forefathers, as they drive ours, and they find motive 

 power for commercial enterprise unknown to those of old ; and 

 looking rather to the days of Isaac Walton than the present, as 

 abounding with trout of exceptionably fine quality, they furnished 

 recreation for some of the best of men, and England's most 

 scientific sons ; to old Isaac, or — as he wrote it — Izaac, who 

 begins his well-known and charming book, 'The Complete Angler, 

 or Contemplative Man's Eecreation,' with a description of his 

 journey to Ware, as Piscator, in company with Yenator and 

 Anceps, to fish in the Eiver Lea, one of his favourite resorts. 

 The value of the rights of fishing at that time, in the Manor of 

 Hertford, may be estimated by having been granted, by King 

 Charles the First, to W^illiam, Earl of Salisbury. It was here that 

 Sir Humphry Davy exercised the gentle craft. It was on the 

 banks of the Colne that he found the materials for the opening 

 pages of his ' Salmonia,' and it was by the aid of these waters 

 that the predecessors of your late President gained a triumph of 

 mechanical skill. 



In the production of root crops Hertfordshire seems often to have 

 led the way. This produce of the soil, with the diminished value 

 of the chief cereal crops, bids fair to be the staple of the future of 

 English agriculture. The samples of these productions more than 

 ever form interesting features of agricultural shows, and by good 

 and liberal cultivation overcome the difficulties presented by a 

 naturally unproductive soil. The Swedish turnip, of the intro- 

 duction of which I do not know the exact date, trusting to the 

 accounts of agriculture in the first years of this century, was little, 

 if at all, cultivated in many counties at that time, whereas here its 

 cultivation had extended from the amateur to the practical farmer. 

 I well remember, when travelling in Sufi:olk in the autumn of 

 1812, my father, who held a small farm, and always took an 

 interest in practical farming, noticed the fields of Swedish turnips 

 as of unusual occurrence, and though at that time in Hertfordshire 

 the quality of the soil was considered by some unfitted for its 

 growth, for many years past it has formed thi'oughout the county 

 a part of the usual rotation of crops. 



Hertfordshire seems, especially at the beginning of the century, 

 to have been a county of experiments by the introduction of machinery 



