io6 baker's north Yorkshire. 



harmed by spring frosts, but that they can usually compete in the 

 York market with the early culinary vegetables grown in the open 

 air with the neighbourhood of York but not with Doncaster and 

 Pontefract. Between these as grown at Thirsk and in the 

 garden at 300 yards upon the Hambleton plateau there is a 

 difference of about a month. Lythe, though near the sea-coast, 

 is in an exposed position and the soil is argillaceous. Hoving- 

 ham, with an argillaceous soil and situated upon the slope 

 towards the north of the calcareous Howardian terrace is ten days 

 later than Thirsk. Between the light sandy soils over the New 

 Red Sandstone on the west of Thirsk, and the clayey soils of 

 the undulated liassic tract on the east of the town there is a 

 difference of a week or ten days in favour of the former, and as 

 we approach the foot of the hills, where the soil is still clayey, 

 of a fortnight or three weeks. A month appears to be about a 

 fair average of the difference between the earliest crops over a 

 considerable tract of the Central valley and an elevation of 300 

 yards amongst the hills on both sides of it, that is to say an 

 average of ten days per hundred yards. It is not unfrequent for 

 the wandering labourers who come to Thirsk to be engaged for 

 one month for the harvest in the low country, and when that is 

 finished to get employment for another month upon the top of 

 the Hambleton plateau. Especially in the west the ingathering 

 of the crops in the hilly district is much more liable to be 

 retarded by rain than in the low country. In the early part of 

 the year there appears to be a retardation of from six weeks to 

 two months in the flowering of species upon the Mickle Fell ridge 

 as compared with the Central valley, and the retardation of the 

 hay and harvest crops in the Central valley as compared with 

 the South of England is about three weeks. 



Temperature of Springs and of the Sea. — In our climate it 

 would seem that at a depth of three feet in the ground the 

 annual range of temperature sinks to from 15 to 20 degrees, 

 the periods of maxima and minima not differing greatly from 

 what they are at the surface ; that at six feet there is a range of 



