Farming of Oxfordshire. 
191 
Amount of Rain in Inches. 
1851. 1852. 1853. 
Oxford 20-33 40-4 27 2 
London .... 18-31 27-98 21-76 
Altlioug;h the amount of rain in 1852 was so large, there were 
many more cloudy and rainy days in 1853, which may account 
for the circumstance that last year is generally considered by 
farmers to have been as wet as its predecessor. The average 
annual fall of rain at Oxford for 25 years is 23 inches. The 
following is the mean temperature of the air in 1853 : — 
I;ady-(iay Mid.sunimer Mich.ielmas Christmas 
quarter. quarter. quarter. quarter. 
Oxford ... 37° 7' 54° 7' 58 M' 42° 3' 
London ... 37° 8' 52° 34' 59° 46' 43= 33' 
Mean Temperature. 
Oxford 47° 45' 
London 48° 24' 
The amount of rain registered at Bicester in 1853 was 23'5 
in. ; the mean range of the thermometer for the year was 47 97°. 
The two first subjects named by the Society are so intimately 
connected that it is thought desirable to consider them under 
one head. The geological strata of the county of Oxford are 
such as to give it a direct agricultural character, none of the 
strata yielding any of those mineral productions which are 
turned to the purposes of manufacture, with exception of its clay 
used for bricks, its ochre, and its stone, which last is quarried 
for building purposes. As classified by geologists, the strata 
are confined within those termed the secondary series, including 
also a small portion of the lower beds of the tertiary. All these 
strata, varying in their constituents, generally exhibit an alter- 
nation of clay and stratified rock or sand, and give rise to that 
numberless variety of soils which mark the county. Yet the 
theory that " the surface of the earth partakes of the nature 
and colour of the subsoil on which it rests," cannot be rigidly 
applied to this county ; as a great part of its agricultural condi- 
tion is due to the various deposits of gravel, which cover the 
strata and form a soil the very opposite in many instances of that 
presented by the denuded surface of the stratum on which they 
rest. The geological features of the county embrace the chalk, 
greensand, gault, Kimmeridge clay, coral rag, Oxford clay, 
oolite, and lias. The agricultural divisions are the Chiltern hills, 
the gravelly and sandy loams and clay soils south of the great 
oolite ; then the large stone-brash district ; and lastly, the red 
soils in the northern portion of the county. 
Beginning with the southern extremity of Oxfordshire, partly 
bounded by the river Thames and the county of Bucks, between 
