THE SOUTH-WESTERN OR PENINSULAR DEPARTMENT OF ENGLAND. THIS DEPARTMENT of England, which is at once natu ral and agricultural, I have described, in the Introduction to these volumes. • THE SOUTHWESTERN DEPARTMENT. The situation of this extremity of the island is remarkable. It stretches away from the main body, in a narrow headland, or peninsula, nearly two hundred miles in length, into the western sea; which is its common boundary; unless where it joins the extremes of the western and southern departments. 'The natural characters of its area are likewise singular. The midland and the western parts of it, are chiefly composed of SLATE-ROCK HILLS: a species of country which is unknown, in the rest of the kingdom; excepting a comparatively small district of its northern department; and excepting the insulated hills of Charnwood, which rise near its center! Indeed, the surface, almost throughout the department (its northeastern angle excepted) is of a singular cast: namely, tall, steepsided hills, severed by narrow valleys; the hills being, in most instances, productive to their summits. Its agricultural distinguishments are not less remarkable. The DAMNONIAN HUSBANDRY is as foreign to the practice of the kingdom at large, as the lands on which it has been nurtured are to those of its other departments.' For DIGESTED DETAILS of the ESTABLISHED PRACTICES of this Department; with MINUTES on my own practice within it; and with TRAVELLING JOURNALS, on viewing its more interesting passages; together with RETROSPECTIVE REMARKS, on the Department at large,-pointing out its distinguishing characteristics, and suggesting the manner in LI which which its striking peculiarities of practice, probably, had their rise; see my RURAL ECONOMY of the WEST of ENGLAND. THIS DEPARTMENT comprizing little more than two Counties, Cornwall and Devonshire, with the western quarter of Somersetshire, and a very small portion of Dorsetshire; -and the Reports to the Board of Agriculture, concerning it, being very few, and of secondary consideration, (one of them excepted);—I have deemed it proper to include my abstract of them, in the same volume with the more important information afforded, by those from the SOUTHERN DEPARTMENT. The quantity of valuable matter which I have been able to extract from the Peninsular Reports is, I perceive, too inconsiderable for a separate publication. THE REPORTS to the Board, that require examination and abstraction, relative to this department, are Fraser's and Worgan's, from Cornwall. Fraser's and Vancouver's, from Devonshire. The small portion of Dorsetshire, which extends within the Peninsula, has been noticed, in reviewing the Reports from that County; and will be mentioned, again, in speaking of Devonshire. CORNWALL. |