( 49G ) 
XXVI. — On the Farmirifi of the North Riding of Yorhsliii e. 
By M. M. MiLBURN. 
Prize Report. 
Ik a traveller were passing through the North Riding of York- 
shire, by either of the lines of railway by which it is intersected, 
he would be likely to arrive at the conclusion that it was an ill- 
cultivated district. The inference would however be an erro- 
neous one, because the two railways happen to pass on low 
levels, and in districts where the land is generally undrained, 
whilst the best or high-lying portions are necessarily hid by 
cuttings ; and as valleys generally, except on alluvial deposits, are 
the inferior soils, and the most difficult to cultivate, they hence 
will usually be found to present a sample of cultivation exceed- 
ingly unfavourable. Although it must be admitted that parts of 
the Riding are decidedly behind-hand in farming, there ai'e some 
districts where Science could scarcely, in her very advanced state, 
suggest any improvement. 
The North Riding of Yorkshire presents as great a variety of 
soil and cultivation as most districts of a similar extent, and in 
few are the details of farming more remarkably modified by the 
geological character of the strata on which the soil rests. To 
the extreme west of the Riding, the grass valleys and hill-sides 
on the mountain limest<me, present grass land so valuable as to let 
for as much as 4/. per acre in that isolated district, where the only 
profit is to l)e made by ordinary farming. Proceeding east, lies 
an ungenial belt of the millstone grits and limestone shale. Next 
a wavy belt of the red sandstone, with a slight intervention of the 
magnesian limestone, and next another, curving over to the north- 
east, of the lias ; then a similar and somewhat parallel belt of the 
oolite. The whole may be described as a series of wavy strips, 
in some cases broader, in some narrower, but several much modi- 
fied by aspect and situation. The soil divides itself, with these 
modifications, much in the same manner. Thus the red sand- 
stone presents the " turnip and barley soil" almost precisely co- 
extensive with the stratum on which it rests ; and where one sys- 
tematic and uniform management prevails, unpractised only for a 
want of skill, or, far more generally, a want of capital. The lias, 
co-extensive with the district called Cleveland, but still bending 
away at the foot of the Ilambleton Hills — cold, heavy, and de- 
signated " two-crop and fallow-land." The limestone, where 
arable, partaking again of its peculiar cultivation, and where 
grass, modified by its cover, thin or otherwise, of the soil resting 
on it; while in the valleys of the north-east and east scarcely any 
