16 SCIENTIFIC SURVEY OF LEICESTER AND DISTRICT 
keep to the valleys or the low ground. The exceptions are the Roman 
Foss Way, which crosses the Wold country to Newark, and the road to 
Peterborough, which rises over the Jurassic uplands. The Grantham 
road, which uses the Wreake valley to Melton, is forced to rise over the 
Melton Ridge. The railways mostly keep to the river valleys or the low 
ground, avoiding the three areas of upland, but the railway from Melton 
to Nottingham is forced to tunnel under the Melton Ridge, and that which 
runs directly eastward from Leicester towards the marlstone escarpment 
tunnels under a spur before turning south-east through a gap in the 
escarpment. Water communication is not much used, though the Soar 
is canalised to its junction with the Trent. 
In the above rapid survey of the Leicester region we have necessarily 
been forced to sketch in the broad outlines and omit detail. We have 
seen, however, something of the more obvious relationships between man 
and nature in the region, and something of the way in which the cultural 
forms express that relationship. ‘The position of the city, the areas of 
grassland and tillage and their subdivisions, are related to slope, elevation, 
soils, drainage and climatic conditions. The iron workings, the coal 
mines and the quarries are related chiefly to the geological structure ; 
the roads and railways to the relief; the reservoirs to elevation, slope, 
stream and rainfall; the hikers, week-enders, and other visitors in the 
Charnwood to the scenic beauty of the physical setting. The focusing 
of much of the economic and other activities of the region on the city is 
mainly a matter of distance, but partly also a matter of its position in 
relation to a series of highly diversified neighbouring areas, and of its size 
as a large manufacturing entity with the many subsidiary industries and 
activities which that fact involves. ‘The city is perhaps fortunate in that 
her two staple trades, hosiery and boots, help to supply one of the three 
great primary needs of mankind, the need for clothing, and that, while 
she carries on a large foreign trade, the main market for these goods is at 
home. She is also perhaps fortunate in being located in one of the 
richest grassland areas in England, for it is on the grassland with its pro- 
duction of beef and mutton, milk and cheese, under steadily improving 
methods of handling, that much of the future prosperity, and therefore 
the purchasing power, of the English countryside would seem to depend. 
