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IV. — A Report upon the Ar/riculture of tlie Counti/ of Durham.* 

 By Thomas Geokge Bell, LL.D. 



Pkize Eeport. 



In a general view of the agriculture of the county of Durham 

 there are so many points present themselves for consideration, all 

 more or less closely connected with the subject, that it is diffi- 

 cult to condense the information, so as to express all tliat is 

 necessary or useful within the limits set for this Report, This, 

 however, I shall attempt to accomplish, and will only premise 

 further, that nothing shall be herein stated which has not been 

 matter of personal experience, actual observation, or information 

 acquired from time to time during a long and extensive practice 

 as a land agent. 



General Characteristics of the Counti/. — These are altogether 

 of a varied nature, whether we look at tlie surface, the strata, 

 the climate, or the inhabitants. In the surface there are great 

 inequalities There are no great mountains, as in some dis- 

 tricts, nor large level plains as in others ; but in every direction 

 we have hills of gentle acclivity, intersected by broad valleys ; 

 the average inclination of the whole being an ascent from the 

 sea, which borders the county on the east, up towards that range 

 of internal mountains which runs along part of the borders of 

 Scotland, and through England as far as Derbyshire. This 

 county does not, however, rise up to the full heiglit of this range 

 of mountains, but stops short at a spot called Kilhope Law, in 

 the midst of as desolate and bleak a moorland scene as Ave could 

 possibly look upon. 



In respect to the strata, we have not, as elsewhere, great bodies 

 of the primitive rocks lying with something of their original re- 

 gularity, but throughout nearly the whole county we have the 

 disjointed and upheaved masses of the coal formation. 



In the south-east corner of the county there is a tract of the 

 new red sandstone ; adjoining to it on the north and north-west 

 there is a range of the magnesian limestone. It enters the 

 county from the south at Winston, and runs diagonally across it 

 by Selaby, Morton, Eldon, Merrington, &c., to the sea-coast at 

 Hartlepool, from Avhence it proceeds along the coast to South 

 Shields. All the county south and south-cast of this limestone is 

 on the new red sandstone, and the whole of the central portion 

 of the county lying to the north of it is on the coal-measures. 



Throughout the whole of the western or moorland portion of 



* It may be only right to state that this Essay -was written and received the 

 p?ize in 1854, and that soa.c portions of it have l)(;en omitted. 



