IRON IN SOILS 187 



obviously colours the soil ; but the real factor in the 

 quality is the physical texture, a certain similarity of 

 which runs through all these red soils. Actually they 

 contain rather less than the usual percentage of oxide 

 of iron. But no fallacy dies harder than the associa- 

 tion of all sorts of virtues, particularly colour in flowers 

 and fruit, with iron in the soil. The probable origin 

 of the opinion is that blood is red and blood contains 

 iron, and for the same reason whiteness and weakness 

 are popularly associated both in bread and in animals. 

 Crossing the Severn at Holt, we immediately found 

 ourselves among some extensive and carefully managed 

 hop yards, the first we had seen since Kent, though 

 one or two still remain among the fruit in the Evesham 

 Valley. But the true home of the Worcestershire hops 

 is west of the Severn, and less in the Severn Valley 

 itself than in that of its tributary, the Teme. Along- 

 side the hops were some orchards of the modern type, 

 young, vigorous, and carefully tended, not the closely 

 planted dwarfs and bushes of the Evesham district, but 

 standards that were, or would be, laid down to grass. 

 This belt of fruit and hop land near the Severn is only 

 narrow, and is succeeded by the more ordinary farming 

 country leading on to Witley, a somewhat highly 

 polished region such as marks a rich and well-kept 

 estate, but with a considerable local reputation for its 

 agriculture. Its farming is perhaps most akin to that 

 of Shropshire, though it also possesses some of the 

 features of the Teme Valley ; but it was not sufficiently 

 special to detain us, and we pushed on up the steep 

 ridge which divides the Severn from the Teme. 

 Abberly Hill forms a northern continuation of the 

 Malvern Ridge, a sharp intrusion of ancient igneous 

 rock which for many geological epochs must have been 

 an island in the seas in which British land was event- 

 '3 



