482 Oil the Agricultural Geology of England and Wales. 



soils." He divides his loams into sandy and flinty, the latter in 

 some parts tenacious, but kept loose and friable by the flints and 

 due tillage. 



Some tracts/' he adds, '' from a degree of wetness, are called 

 clays, but improperly ; indeed, there is scarcely a more general error 

 in various parts of the kingdom than that of giving the term to 

 loams of various descriptions. The district of loams is every 

 where under the turnip course, and the crops are fed on the land — 

 a circumstance sufficient to show that the soil is in some degree 

 removed from the real clay of farmers, and without any similarity 

 to the clay of chemists, with which we have nothing to do in 

 agricultural inquiries." This district of loams lies partly on the 

 chalk district, partly on the plastic and London clay, of our 

 geological maps. A line drawn from Ware to the extremity of 

 the county, in the direction of Baldock, is very nearly the boundary 

 between his loams and eastern clay district. This last nearly 

 resembles the contiguous claylands of Essex, being rather a 

 strong, wet loam on a stiff basis of clay marl, both, but especially 

 the last, in a great measure free from stone and flint, so generally 

 abounding in the county." It is situated partly on the chalk of 

 the geological maps, and appears to answer to that district de- 

 scribed by Mr. Baker in Essex, which, taking Dunmow as a 

 centre, extends, he says, to Cambridgeshire, Hertford, Epping, 

 and nearly to Chelmsford, subject to some variations. It is 

 evidently, from his description, an erratic district in which the 

 surface soils are based on a continuation of the till of Norfolk 

 and Suffolk. 



Young's southern clay district of Hertfordshire is represented 

 on geological maps by that portion of the London clay which is 

 cut off between the boundary of Middlesex and a line drawn 

 from Barnet to Elstree. His district of gravel with smooth blue 

 pebbles, whose sterility he paints in such dark colours from per- 

 sonal experience in the cultivation of it, is evidently the outcrop 

 of a pebble bed of the plastic series, with masses of the Hert- 

 fordshire pudding stone, celebrated for its beauty when cut and 

 polished. A joke was current some twenty years ago among the 

 farmers at Uxbridge market, respecting a similar tract which an 

 auctioneer had been tempted to buy by its low price, and to which, 

 on putting it up for sale again, after expending much money upon 

 it, he could give no better character than that it was an " improv- 

 able property." Such barren tracts, however, have sometimes a 

 value independent of their agricultural capabilities. That pro- 

 perty is now covered with villas and ornamental plantations. 



The map appended to Mavor's Report on Berkshire professes 



* Journ. Roy. Agri. Soc, vol. v., p. 1. 



