8 RURAL ECONOMY OF ENGLAND. 



storms ; their sides, unceasingly torn by winds, and 

 flooded with those never-failing waters which collect and 

 form immense lakes at their base, possess only here and 

 there a thin covering of vegetable soil. Winter lasts there 

 nearly all the year ; and the islands belonging to them 

 the Hebrides, Orkneys, and Shetlands partake of the 

 gloomy Icelandic character. More than three-fourths of 

 the Highlands is uncultivated, and the small portion 

 which it is possible to work requires all the industry of 

 the inhabitants to produce anything. Oats even do not 

 always ripen there. 



Where is such a country to be found in France \ That 

 most nearly resembling it is the nucleus of central moun- 

 tains, with their ramifications, which cover some ten 

 departments, and stretch to the Alps beyond the Ehone 

 namely, the ancient provinces of Limousin, Auvergne, 

 Vivarais, Forez, and Dauphine ; but the departments of 

 the Higher and Lower Alps, the poorest and most unpro- 

 ductive of all, and those of Lozere and Haute-Loire, which 

 come next to them, are still greatly superior in natural 

 resources to the celebrated counties of Argyll and Inver- 

 ness, and the still more inaccessible county of Suther- 

 land. This superiority, more and more marked in Cantal, 

 Puy-de-D6me, Correze, Creuse, and Haute- Vienne, be- 

 comes beyond all comparison when we come to oppose 

 to the best straths of the Highlands the Limagne 

 d' Auvergne and the valley of Gr^sivaudan, those two 

 paradises of the cultivator dropped into the midst of our 

 mountainous region. 



Even the Lowlands of Scotland are far from being 

 everywhere susceptible of cultivation. Numerous ridges 

 cross the country, and may almost be said to unite the 

 Northumberland mountains to the Grampians. Out of 

 the four millions of hectares two are nearly unproductive ; 



