The Agriculture of Glamorganshire. 
169 
Bute Dock at Cardiff, and in 1841 the Taff Vale Railway was 
opened ; whilst about the same period the port of Swansea 
was being improved and developed. As a result of the 
development of the great mineral resources of the county, the 
population is found to have increased in seventy years, viz. 
from 1801 to 1871, at the rate of 461 per cent. In 1871 the 
population was 397,859 persons, whilst the Census of 1881 
shows an increase of population during the decade of 28'54 
per cent. In 1831 the depressed state of agriculture is referred 
to as being the means of increasing the town population and 
reducing that of the rural districts. The value of the Welsh 
smokeless steam coal was discovered between 1835 and 1840, 
and in ten years afterwards a number of collieries were opened 
in the Aberdare and Merthyr valleys. The development of the 
coal trade has been progressive ever since that period. There 
are now over 300 collieries in the county, and the quantity of 
coal raised in 1881 was 15,987,516 tons. These statistics may 
be considered foreign to the purpose of an agricultural essay, 
but in my opinion nothing exercises such a powerful influence 
for good on the agricultural interest of any county as the profit- 
able development of its other great industries. The best markets 
are thereby opened for every kind of agricultural produce at 
a nominal expense of transit. The agriculture of Glamorgan- 
shire may not have even now much to commend it ; but that it 
has been greatly stimulated by the commercial undertakings of 
recent years the least observant will scarcely be prepared to 
dispute. 
Elevation. — The general elevation of the hills at the base or 
south crop of the Coal-measures may he taken as 400 feet,' and 
the mean average of the mountains at from 800 to 900 feet. 
The mean level of the valleys may be taken as being between 
300 and 450 feet above the level of the sea, and the cultivated 
portions of the hillsides at an average of about 600 feet. 
Temperature. — The mean temperature of the county may be 
put down at 50 degrees. In the Vale of Glamorgan, where 
some exotic plants thrive in the open air, the temperature would 
be much higher than 50 degrees, but it would be correspond- 
ingly lower in the hill districts. Dr. Franklen Evans, in his 
Meteorological Report to the Cardiff Naturalists' Society in 
1879, gave the mean temperature in that year as 47 • 6 degrees. 
Rainfall and Climate. — The rainfall, though exceeded in 
some parts of Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Yorkshire, is 
excessive compared with that of the English counties generally. 
According to Mr. Symons's Tabl es, the mean rainfall of Gla- 
morganshire in 1882 was 74*90 inches, whilst the average 
rainfall of the county of Middlesex was 29-08 inches, and that 
