4 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF LEICESTER AND DISTRICT 
natural landscape, and those which constitute the cultural landscape or 
natural landscape as modified by man. The motivating force effecting 
this modification is taken to be the effort of man to satisfy his desires. 
Man desires beef and milk. He uses the extensive grasslands of the 
Leicester area to raise cattle and sheep. He desires cereals and potatoes. 
The lighter and better-drained limestone and sandstone soils of the north- 
eastern part of the county provide him with a suitable area for tillage. 
He needs to transport his products. In the quarries of the Charnwood 
Forest and elsewhere he finds excellent road metal to surface his roads. 
He desires buildings to house and shelter his activities and their resulting 
products. In the marlstone at Scalford, the limestone at Croxton, and 
the clays of the lower grounds he finds material for his houses and villages. 
He needs factories in towns and cities in which to shape his products into 
articles suitable for consumption. In Leicester he takes leather and wool 
and fashions them into boots and hosiery with the aid of organisation, 
capital, labour, and coal from the nearby coalfield. The cities and towns 
require municipal government and the performance of social services for 
their inhabitants. Man erects suitable buildings to house these activities, 
constructs waterworks and power stations, and organises government. 
He needs recreation. He takes waste areas and converts them into the 
numerous playing fields, golf courses, parks and open spaces to be found 
in the city and countryside. He desires to gratify his esthetic senses and 
preserve some of the beauties and amenities of the countryside for present 
and future use. He sets aside, as at Bradgate Park and Swithland Wood, 
beautiful scenic areas in which town and country dwellers may enjoy 
nature unspoilt. ‘Through scientific methods of cultivation and produc- 
tion applied to his natural surroundings he obtains surpluses which he 
exchanges for commodities from other areas. In this fashion Leicester- 
shire beef, milk and cheese, hosiery, boots and engineering products pro- 
cure for the country and town dweller the surpluses of other regions. 
These are only some of the chief relationships which exist between 
man and nature in the Leicester region. In all these activities man in the 
Leicester region makes use of his environment. His activities change 
from place to place throughout the region with changes in the natural 
environment. In each district man moulds the face of nature, and his 
activities are in turn moulded and modified by it. In this general geo- 
graphical survey we can only touch briefly on the chief districts, with 
some of the cultural and natural phenomena related to man’s activities, 
which fall within the Leicester region. 
Although from the writer’s point of view the most satisfactory approach 
to the study of a region is through an examination of the human activities 
in the area, it may be more helpful for the general reader to have before 
him a brief description of the region from the topographical and geological 
standpoints. : 
The city of Leicester is situated near the centre of the county, on the 
river Soar. This valley is the central topographical feature of the region. 
It runs roughly south-north, bending eastward in a flat bow to avoid the 
ancient rocky masses of the Charnwood Forest. Some miles north of the 
city the river Wreake enters the Soar at a right angle from the north-east. 
