200 
Farming of Oxfordshire. 
oolitic detritus. The meadows alonj? both sides of these rivers 
are naturally good, producing a fair amount of herbage of excellent 
quality. The grass-lands bordering on the Windrush (which 
enters the county at Burford, and flows through Witney into the 
Thames at Standlake) are of an inferior descripticm. The sub- 
soil is a hungry clay, and the gravel here is all of a local cha- 
racter, as the river rises in the Cotswold range, and there is no 
opening in the stonebrasli escarpment through which the drift 
of the northern counties could enter. 
This is a brief description of the Geology of Oxfordshire, and 
Avith the assistance of the map and the sections, may be tolerably 
plain to those conversant with the county. But farmers want 
maps which show the superficial accumulations and alluvial 
deposits. This is the geology — the geology of the surface, that 
is most useful to agriculture. It can be of little benefit for an 
occupier of the Thames meadows to look at a geological map 
and see his land described as Oxford clay, or for the proprietor 
of tlie barren heights of Shotover to know that his land rests on 
the Portland oolite. In one case 10 feet of gravel, in the other 
20 feet of ferruginous sand, must exert such direct influence on 
the nature of the soil that it matters little what deposit is buried 
below. Therefore, admitting that the rock formations define by 
their mineral character the general agricultural features of a 
district, the superficial deposits produce those numerous varia- 
tions of soils found in tliat district. It is to be hoped that 
geologists will pay the same attention to the surface of the soil 
as they have devoted to the substrata. Then the farmer will be 
as much benefited by their able researches as the miner, and, 
receiving a fair share of assistance, will place a higher value on 
their important discoveries. 
Perhaps at no period within the last ten years could a more 
unfavourable time have been selected for viewing the agriculture 
of Oxfordshire. A long season of the most apj)alling distress 
was followed by two remarkably wet years. The farmer on a 
flay soil had his capital reduced, his energies paralysed, and his 
means so straitened, that when a few cheering rays of returning 
prosperity illumined the agricultural horizon, antl gave him tlie 
means of regaining lost ground, his increased activity was of no 
avail against wet and uncongenial seasons. He had emj)loyed 
less labour, postponed improvements, and contracted all his out- 
goings in order to meet his payments in these altered times, and 
of course tlue land is now feeling the effects of that parsimonious 
treatment, which as yet time lias not sufficed to rectify. Tiie 
consequence is, there is more foul ground throughout the county 
than has been known for years. 
It niay be as well to remark at this early stage, that in con- 
