Xvi DESCRIPTION OF THE ISLE OF MAN 
faintly visible in parts of Anglesea and Snowdonia. The 
Mourne Mountains form a grand mass in the seascape to 
the west, and further north Slieve Croob is well displayed. 
In rough figures, 45,000 acres of the Manx area is quite 
uncultivated (314 only being under water). 22,000 acres 
are devoted to corn, oats and barley being the principal 
crops, and the production of wheat having nearly ceased; 
11,000 are under green crop, 39,000 grass (rotation), and 
20,000 permanent pasture; the proportion of pasture-land 
tends to increase. The acreage under wood is insignificant," 
though materially increased by the late afforesting of tracts 
of the Crown Common at South Barrule, Archallagan, and 
Greeba. 
The population (1901) is 54,613, of which the four towns 
contain more than half. It decreased nearly 1000 within 
the previous decade. 
The Isle of Man consists of a main central mass of high- 
land, to which at the north and south are appended much 
smaller tracts of marly level country. 
I. THe NortTHERN LOWLAND, which is much the larger of 
the two tracts (containing the parishes of Jurby, Andreas, 
Bride, and parts of Lezayre and Ballaugh), forms a well- 
defined district, about one-fifth of the island’s total area, 
sharply bounded by the wall-like face in which the central 
mountain range rises from it. 
Seen from these beautiful hillsides, clothed largely with 
steep woods (the home of Sparrow Hawk and Long-eared 
Owl, of Magpie and Ring Dove, Missel Thrush and Gold- 
crest, and very probably the nesting place of the Crossbill), 
1 In 1648 Blundell writes, ‘I could not observe one tree to be in any place but 
what grew in gardens.’ Yet legislation in 1629 and 1667 seems to show that 
there was something of exaggeration in this statement. Early in the last century 
tree-planting became more general. See Moore, History of the Isle of Man 
pp. 919-920. 
