AGRICULTURE:. 311 
Soils. 
The Liassic areas are almost entirely under cultivation : the 
tracts formed of the stone-beds being mostly under tillage, and 
those formed of clay being mostly grass-lands. 
The Lower Lias limestones furnish a brown loamy and brashy 
soil of variable depth and porosity, on which crops of corn and 
roots are grown. In Glamorganshire some of the limestone-tracts 
afford pasturage for sheep, but much of the Lias country there 
yields wheat of fine quality, also beans, oats, barley, anti turnips, 
while samphire grows luxuriantly on the borders of the grey 
Lias cliffs.* 
The soil on the Middle Lias in the south of England is a rich 
brown friable loamy and clayey soil, and the districts covered by it 
are almost entirely agricultural. The land is marked by small 
enclosures, as in the Vale of Marshwood and near Bridport, where 
roots, corn, beans, grasses and vegetables are cultivated. The 
more sandy areas are marked by the occurrence of the brake-fern 
and by fir-trees, but in most tracts oak and ash grow well in the 
hedgerows, and there are many fine elms as well as beeches. 
Some of the hedge-rows in Dorsetshire and again in Oxfordshire 
are very luxuriant, while the deep sandy lanes, or " hollow ways," 
excavated in the soft beds, as between Colmers Hill and Leaz- 
acre near Bridport, and at other localities in Dorsetshire are very 
picturesque. 
In Dorsetshire and South Somersetshire the Marlstone in many 
places is very thin, and it decomposes into a brown ferruginous 
loamy soil ; but where the rock is thicker there is a good deal of 
rich arable land, as near Ilminster and South Petherton. 
The red ferruginous soils on the ironstone-rocks of the Middle 
Lias of Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire, Rutland- 
shire and Lincolnshire, are as a rule highly productive. The soil 
is often a deep sandy loam, which " works well," although apt to 
harden and crack in summer. Rutland indeed owes its name to 
the " red land " which extends over much of the vale of Catmos, 
but part of it is due to the ferruginous beds of the Northampton 
Sands. Corn and roots are grown. The richness of some of the 
red lands is attributed by Mr. B. Thompson to the presence of 
phosphoric acid in the Marlstone.f (See also p. 222.) The deep 
red loam found near Barrowby and Great Gonerby, near 
Crrantham, is considered to furnish some of the most fertile tracts 
in Lincolnshire,! 
The Upper Lias furnishes a loamy soil in Dorsetshire and 
South Somerset Northwards for some distance it exercises little 
* See Conybeare aud Phillips, Geol. England and Wales, p. 277. 
f Middle Lias of Northamptonshire, p. V J . 
j J. A. Clarke, Journ. R. Agric. Soc., vol. xii., p. 259. 
For xVnalyses of soils from Montacute, and Combe Farm N.W. of Sherborne, 
see A. Voelcker, Journ. Bath and W. of Eng. Soc., ser. 2, vol. vi. p. 262 ; aud for 
Analysis of soil from South Petherton, see T. D. Acland, Journ. R. Agric. Soc., 
vol. xi. p. 720. 
