INTRODUCTION. 6 
a flourishing population of manufacturers ; the 
third, as a great corn field, occupied by persons 
almost exclusively engaged in the pursuits of 
husbandry. 
These dissimilar conditions of three great 
divisions of our country, result from differences 
in the geological structure of the districts 
through which our three travellers have been 
conducted. The first will have seen only those 
north-western portions of Britain, that are com- 
posed of rocks belonging to the primary and 
transition series : the second will have traversed 
those fertile portions of the new red sandstone 
formation which are made up of the detritus 
of more ancient rocks, and have beneath, and 
near them, inestimable treasures of mineral coal : 
the third will have confined his route to wolds 
of limestone, and downs of chalk, which are 
best adapted for sheep-walks, and the produc- 
tion of corn.* 
Hence it appears that the numerical amount 
* The road from Bath through Cirencester and Oxford to 
Buckingham, and thence by Kettering and Stamford to Lincoln, 
affords a good example of the unvaried sameness in the features 
and cuhure of the soil, and in the occupations of the people, 
that attends the line of direction, in which the oolite formation 
crosses England from Weymouth to Scarborough. 
The road from Dorchester, by Bland ford and Salisbury, to 
Andover and Basingstoke, or from Dunstable to Royston, Cam- 
bridge, and Newmarket, affords similar examples of the dull uni- 
formity that we observe in a journey along the line of bearing 
