10.

_Distribution._--A detailed map of the distribution of population in
England and Wales[11] shows certain well-defined areas of very dense
population. First for consideration, though not in geographical
extent, stands the area round London, in Middlesex, Surrey, Kent,
Essex and Hertfordshire. A great proportion of this population is
purely residential, that is to say, its working members do not
practise their professions at home or close to home, but in the
metropolis, travelling a considerable distance between their
residences and their offices. Just as London, in spite of its manifold
industrial interests, is hardly to be termed a manufacturing centre,
so the populous district surrounding it is not to be termed an
industrial district in the sense in which that term is applied to the
remaining regions of dense population which fall for consideration
here. London gained its paramount importance from its favourable
geographical position in respect of the rest of England on the one
hand and the Continent on the other, and the populous district of the
"home counties" owes its existence to that importance; whereas other
populous districts have generally grown up at the point where some
source of natural wealth, as coal or iron, lay to hand. The great
populous area which covers south Lancashire and the West Riding of
Yorkshire, and extends beyond them into Cheshire, Derbyshire,
Staffordshire and Nottinghamshire, is not in reality a unit. The whole
of the lowland in the south of Lancashire has almost the appearance of
one vast town, whereas among the hills of the Pennine Chain the
population crowds the valleys on either flank and leaves in the
high-lying centre some of the largest tracts of practically
uninhabited country in England. Moreover, the industries in different
parts of this area (for it is strictly an industrial area) differ
completely, as will be observed later, though coal-mining is common to
all. The other most extensive centres of dense population are the
coal-mining or manufacturing districts of Northumberland and Durham,
of the midlands (parts of Warwickshire, Worcestershire and
Leicestershire), and of South Wales and Monmouthshire; and it is in
these districts, and others smaller, but of similar character, that
the greatest increase of population has been recorded, since the
extensive development of their resources during the 19th ce