SHEEP AND BARLEY 125 



soils, which are mostly kept in grass. Round the edge 

 of all the industrial districts of the north small dairy 

 farming on grass land prevails ; there is an immediate 

 and steady market for milk, and the conditions pro- 

 duce just the kind of little farmer, doing most of his 

 work with his own hands, who can make a living out 

 of a few cows on comparatively poor land. 



Farther back from the towns Northumbria possesses 

 an energetic race of larger farmers ; but there is no 

 great area of arable land until the northern part of the 

 county is reached beyond Alnwick. There a belt of 

 land lies near the coast, a belt marked roughly by the 

 North-Eastern Railway and the high-road, which is 

 mostly under the plough, and shows some of the finest 

 management in the country. The broad valley which 

 extends from Alnwick to Wooler, and thence along 

 the course of the Till to Tweedside, partakes of the 

 same character. The best of the land is rather on 

 the light side, distinctively sheep and barley land ; but 

 the soils are very variable, for the glacial drifts do not 

 preserve any definite type for many miles, or even 

 acres, together. The country slopes gently to the sea, 

 but is diversified by the deeply cut stream courses on 

 the one hand and by occasional ridges of old moraine 

 matter, forming narrow and steep-sided uncultivated 

 banks called " kames," out of which gravel and boulders 

 can be dug. Other sudden banks run for miles across 

 country roughly from west to east ; these are the dikes 

 of basalt which stretch like a spider's web from the old 

 volcano in Mull across Scotland and the north of 

 England, sometimes enlarging into masses of basalt 

 rock like the great crags on which the castles of 

 Bamburgh and Dunstanburgh are built. In this district 

 the farms run large, from 400 to 800 acres ; and the 

 farming is in the hands of well-to-do men, some 



