440 CORRESPONDING SOCIETIES. 



3. Since 1816 there have been numerous Government bodies, including 

 Royal Commissions, inquiring into the state of agriculture, and although 

 of all forms of literature a Commission's Minutes of Evidence is the most 

 tedious, nevertheless the information is of great value and importance for 

 the survey. 



The Geographical Association is now publishing in its Journal biblio- 

 graphies of the various counties. It is also endeavouring to aid those 

 who are making surveys by putting them in touch with sources of informa- 

 tion ; its library has been enriched by a generous grant from the Carnegie 

 Trust. 



4. In our own time there is unfortunately no systematic survey com- 

 parable with those of the first Board of Agriciilture. Agricultural teaching 

 and research both suffer in consequence. In 1911 Sir Daniel Hall and 

 myself published a survey of Kent, Surrey and Sussex on lines which we 

 believe to be suitable for an agricultural region. The Oxford Institute 

 for Research in Agricultural Economics under Mr. C. S. Orwin has been 

 responsible for careful surveys of Oxfordshire and Berkshire ; short accounts 

 have also been published by G. W. Robinson of the soils of Shropshire and 

 North Wales. For each county there are now agricultural organisers and 

 advisers who have a considerable amount of information and should be 

 consulted in any regional survey of a rural area. 



All these records are general ; they may not help in the details of the 

 region under investigation, though they give the broad outlines without 

 which the details may be meaningless. For the detailed history of the 

 region great efforts should be made to get at the old estate or parish 

 maps. Other records usually exist in the village accessible to all. Field 

 names often go back for centuries, recording the original owner or some 

 ancient usage. The size and boundaries of the parish afford a measure of 

 its resources in the past. The non-puritanical character of the average 

 Englishman led him in bygone days to build beautiful churches which tell 

 something of the life of the people of old. The oolite ridge running 

 from the Cotswolds across into Lincolnshire is rich in churches and added 

 chapels of the fifteenth century, when the wool trade brought much money 

 to the sheep farmers. 



Later on the builder's craft was applied to house making. The farm- 

 houses show the standard of prosperity and of comfort in the days when 

 they were built and something of the vicissitudes of later times. The 

 abundance of fine old Jacobean houses speak of the great wealth of that 

 period. In some of the less accessible parts of the west and south, these 

 houses have remained almost unchanged ; the Jacobean period repre- 

 sented the climax of prosperity. But elsewhere the houses were greatly 

 altered in the eighteenth century or after the Napoleonic wars or in the 

 "sixties of the last century, indicating further peaks of prosperity when 

 people had enough money to pull their houses to pieces and modernise 

 them. The position of old ecclesiastical buildings may show close 

 relationships to agricultural resources. 



The value of a regional survey is great. Its importance to the general 

 community for town planning has been abundantly demonstrated by 

 Professor Abercrombie and Mr. Pepler. For students it pro\'ides a 

 valuable record of the countryside as it is now, as its resources are used 



