INTKODUCTION. Iv 



eastward up the valley of the Nar. The other boundaries 

 of the district coincide with those of the county. 



Except a few low knolls locally and expressively 

 termed " islands," the whole of this district is one vast 

 level plain, through, or skirting, which the great rivers 

 that drain a considerable portion of England from the 

 confines of Essex, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, 

 Oxfordshire, Warwickshire and Northamptonshire, 

 make their way sluggishly to the sea. The soil is 

 unequivocally " black," and mostly composed of a great 

 depth of peat, below which hes a marl, having its 

 surface in many places coated with gravel of the " drifb" 

 period. Hardly a hedge is seen, but the surface is 

 intersected every few hundred yards by deep ditches, 

 cut at right angles to each other, and communicating 

 with wider ditches, which are locally called "lodes," and, 

 running into the still larger water-courses, assist the 

 more thorough drainage of the land. Belts and small 

 plantations of trees, known as '^ holts," and consisting 

 chiefly of black poplar, ash, and alder, with an occasional 

 windmill, or the chimney of a steam-engine — for both 

 'wind and steam power are used to get rid of the water — 

 are the principal objects which break the line of the 

 horizon. 



It may be doubted if at the present time any part of 

 this district can be truly said to preserve its natural 

 aspect. The spectator must draw upon his imagination 

 to picture to his eye the whole of this level plain as it 

 appeared even a hundred years ago, when in place of 

 the luxuriant crops of oats, mangel-wurtzel, mustard, 

 and Swedish turnips, it was one uniform bed of sedge, 

 varied only by a few low sallow bushes. It is beyond 

 his imagination to conceive an older state of things, 

 when a forest of goodly oaks flourished amid thickets 

 of hazel, though the trunks of the former and the nuts 

 of the latter are still found admirably preserved in the 



