THE NORTHERN COUNTIES. 265 



The "West Eiding is the appendant to Lancashire, and, 

 like the latter, one of the greatest manufacturing dis- 

 tricts in the world. It contains the great and well-known 

 manufacturing towns of Leeds and Sheffield, the one 

 as famous for its woollens, and the other for its hard- 

 ware, as the towns of Lancashire are for their cottons. 

 Near these immense marts of British manufactures, with 

 the less important, though not less busy, towns which 

 surround them, agriculture must necessarily flourish. 

 Eents are as high as in Lancashire, and wages even 

 higher, the latter reaching 2s. 6d. per working day. The 

 land is nearly all in grass ; and, like all districts where the 

 population is great, dairy farming and the fattening of 

 cattle are the chief occupations. Many farms are below 

 twenty acres, and these, for the most part, are cultivated 

 by the journeymen weavers, who thus add the produce of 

 their farm to that of their loom. Among the most pro- 

 ductive crops, Italian rye-grass has lately been conspi- 

 cuous. Mr Caird makes out that forty tons of green 

 fodder per acre worth, at present prices, 48 may, 

 with good management, be obtained from this rye-grass. 



The East Eiding is quite different from the West 

 without manufactures, no large towns, no small farms, 

 and no superabundant population ; nowhere perhaps is 

 property less divided. After crossing the Humber, the 

 quiet of an exclusively agricultural country succeeds to 

 the bustle of a manufacturing one. These contrasts are 

 frequent in England. The wolds of the East Eiding 

 are a continuation of those of Lincoln. Large farming 

 there reigns supreme, and has been the means of in- 

 creasing the production three-fold within the last fifty 

 years. 



The mountainous region begins again in the North 

 Eiding. It contains some fertile valleys, but the whole is 



