performed in a factory—that is to say, by a number of workers congregated in one building; and the only instance is at Limerick, where "guipure" lace is made on this system.

The HOSIERY trade is carried on both in factories and very largely in the cottages of the workers, stocking weaving, in particular, being a great domestic occupation in Leicestershire, which is the headquarters of the hosiery industry, although it branches off also into the counties of Nottingham and Derby. Leicester and Loughborough have become very considerable factory towns, and the trade occupies a good many persons in the small towns and villages, such as Hinckley and Lutterworth, and also between Nottingham and Mansfield. Leicester itself is more busy with woollen hosiery manufacture (like the Scotch towns of Hawick and Galashiels, mentioned before); Nottingham takes charge of the cotton, merino, and silk hosiery; and Hinckley of the common cotton goods; so that we see the same singular localisation of trade which we have so often noticed before. The elastic web trade-which combines india-rubber with cotton, silk, or whatever the textile may be, so as to make braces, boot sides, gaiters, etc.—is a rather new branch of hosiery, and is limited to two towns and their neighbourhood, viz., Loughborough in Leicestershire, and Coventry in Warwickshire. The hair trade for weaving hair for stuffing mattresses and making chair-seating-is a smaller one than any that we have described, and has no particular locality. The factories are few, and are dotted about the country-several in London and Surrey, and also in

Suffolk and the borders of Cambridgeshire, where, in the Stour Valley, a considerable population is maintained in the town of Halstead, and the villages of Long Melford and Glemsford, by making hair-seating. There is one other textile industry to which we must allude, and that is, ROPE and cordage making, which, though scattered through our large cities and towns, is a very important industry in connection with the hemp and fibre trades; but to a certain extent it has been diminished by the employment of wire ropes for many purposes for which fibre was formerly used. Twine and string are very largely spun by hand at Bridport in Dorsetshire; and extensive rope factories are to be found in London, Liverpool, Birmingham and Bristol, though ropewalks, on a large or small scale, exist in the outskirts of most towns of any size. Having briefly reviewed the geographical conditions of our textile trades, our next subject will be the materials made out of them in the shape of clothing.

The ultimate end of all spinning and weaving being to convert certain materials to the use and comfort of man, we shall not be surprised to find that a great amount of clothing is made, and that a variety of trades are dependent upon its production. These trades, however, are so widely spread over all our towns and villages, that it is impossible to assign any special locality to the majority of them, though some are congregated in one place sufficiently to characterise it. Gloves, for instance, are made more particularly at three towns, Worcester and Evesham in Worcestershire, and Yeovil in Somersetshire; and a good deal

E

of the woollen and cotton glove trade is carried on in Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire.

In the same way that a glovemaker may be found in any town in the kingdom, so may a hatter; but, as a trade, hat-making exists principally in London, Atherstone (a small town in Warwickshire), Oldham and Stockport, the two latter places being principally engaged in making felt hats. Women's hats and bonnets, when made of straw plait, give rise to a very important industry, employing a vast number of young people, largely in London, but chiefly in the towns of Luton and Dunstable in Bedfordshire, and Hitchin and St Albans in Hertfordshire, the first-named place almost assuming the appearance of a factory town. The straw-plaiting industry resembles somewhat the pillow lacemaking, inasmuch as it is carried on in the villages for a considerable distance around these towns; and the plait is brought to market at Luton, and there sold to the manufacturers to make up into bonnets and hats. The extent of the industry may be estimated by the fact that nearly 40,000 persons are employed in it, though a great number consists of very young children, who work in the various "plaitschools" in the villages. Boots and shoes form another branch of the clothing trade, for which certain towns are known. The leather trade-i.e., tanning and currying is pretty well dispersed throughout the country, though Bristol may be considered as the headquarters of the tanners. Naturally, too, there is a large shoemaking trade at Bristol, though not so important as that at Northampton, which place is almost entirely dedicated to St Crispin. Leicester, Ipswich and Stafford

are other towns with an important boot and shoe trade; while at Newcastle-under-Lyme in Staffordshire, boots and shoes are turned out almost wholly by machinery.

AGRICULTURE.

We must now turn our attention to agriculture, a very different kind of industry from that which we have been hitherto examining, but one which is not less essential to the prosperity of a country. Great as are the riches accruing to England from her mineral treasures, and the various manufactures depending upon them, her backbone may be said to be formed of the agricultural interest—of her lands, crops and live stock, of the owners of the soil whose capital is invested in it, and of the farmers and the peasantry, whose intelligence and labour enable the land to give forth its treasures. Great Britain was an agricultural country long before she was a manufacturing one, as indeed every country must be, for it is the first instinct of man's nature, however rude and uncivilised he may be, to obtain from the land on which he lives sufficient to satisfy his requirements of subsistence, ere he begins to think that he has any further wants to be satisfied. Different as the industry of agriculture is from that of manufactures, they are yet most intimately connected with each other in many ways, both natural and artificial. The farmer and the miner are equally interested in the outline of the land, the geological constituents of

the rocks, and the capabilities of the soil; while the rivers and streams that give water-power to our manufactories, and convey our commerce to the sea, are the very life-blood of the country, in shaping and forming the valleys, and fertilising the lands through which they flow. Moreover, as knowledge has increased and science developed, agriculture has become more and more allied to and dependent upon our manufactures. Engineers and chemists are now as necessary to the cultivation of a large farm as they are to the carrying on of an iron work or the superintendence of a bleaching establishment; and each day reveals the increasing necessity for a good farmer to know something of other sciences besides that which is peculiarly his own.

Great Britain shows the same diversity of character in her agricultural resources as she does in her manufactures, mainly owing to the number of distinct geological formations which are found within her comparatively limited space, and to the great variety and extent of her hydrography or water-supply. Those who wish. to study minutely the agriculture of the country, should make themselves acquainted with these two branches of knowledge, for on them the character of the soil and the nature of the crops chiefly depend. It is to them, too, that are owing those changes of scenery and landscape which make England so dear to the tourist. What can be of greater contrast than the sunny hop-gardens of Kent and the bleak fells of Cumberland, the wooded flats of Essex and the moors of northern Yorkshire? And the products of these different parts of the country vary as much as their