ON THE PRICE OF GRAIN. 239 



in one year even from Edinburgh, from Falmouth and Pem- 

 broke in the south-west, from Exeter, Southampton, Chi- 

 chester, and Canterbury in the south. But his most im- 

 portant centres are the Home counties, the East, and the 

 Midlands. 



All the localities give the price of wheat, and most of them 

 of barley, malt, and oats. But the other four kinds of grain 

 are by no means of equal distribution. In some districts rye 

 is never quoted, in others no price of beans is given. Those 

 which supply no beans often have grey peas. White peas 

 are found most rarely. Every kind of grain however is found 

 in London. There are parts of England, for example the 

 chalk district of Hampshire, where beans are never grown 

 now. From a number of such particulars I concluded that 

 the prices of the returns are of produce from the district only, 

 unless of course the market was a central one and of con- 

 siderable importance. 



It is obvious that the results from Houghton's entries are 

 best dealt with by dividing the country into districts, having 

 regard to the circumstances of the time. One of these will be 

 the valley of the Thames and its greater affluents, with 

 certain places such as Hitchin and Wycombe near it. The 

 water-way of the Thames, made navigable now as far as 

 Lechlade, the obstacles between Burcot pier and Oxford 

 having been removed in the seventeenth century after re- 

 peated failures, was extensively used for heavy goods, carried 

 up and down steam in flat-bottomed barges, the cost of such 

 carriage, as I shall show hereafter, having been very low. The 

 next district is the Eastern Counties, chiefly Cambridgeshire, 

 Bedfordshire, Essex, parts of Hertfordshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, 

 and Huntingdonshire. The Midlands are less definite, but will 

 comprise the counties west of those last named, generally be- 

 tween the Trent and the Thames. The South is the range from 

 Kent to Devonshire, and includes some Surrey markets. The 

 South-west includes Falmouth, Plymouth, Bristol, and Pem- 

 broke, with the valleys of the Severn and the Wye. The North 



