t beauty of the rural country in the south, where the
barren Bunter pebble-beds have never invited agriculture, and where
considerable vestiges of the old woodland still remain in and near
Sherwood Forest, has attracted so many seats of the landed aristocracy
as to earn for that part the familiar name of "the Dukeries." The
central position of York in the north made it the capital of Roman
Britain in ancient times, and an important railway junction in our
own.

The eastern division.

Five natural regions may be distinguished in the Eastern Division of
England, by no means so sharply marked off as those of the west, but
nevertheless quite clearly characterized. The first is the Jurassic
Belt, sweeping along the border of the Triassic plain from the south
coast at the mouth of the Exe to the east coast at the mouth of the
Tees. This is closely followed on the south-east by the Chalk country,
occupying the whole of the rest of England except where the Tertiary
Basins of London and Hampshire cover it, where the depression of the
Fenland carries it out of sight, and where the lower rocks of the
Weald break through it. Thus the Chalk appears to run in four
diverging fingers from the centre or palm on Salisbury Plain, other
formations lying wedge-like between them. Various lines of reasoning
unite in proving that the Mesozoic rocks of the south rest upon a mass
of Palaeozoic rocks, which lies at no very great depth beneath the
surface of the anticlinal axis running from the Bristol Channel to the
Strait of Dover. The theoretical conclusion has been confirmed by the
discovery of Coal Measures, with workable coal seams, at Dover at a
depth of 2000 ft. below the surface.

The Eastern Division is built up of parallel strata, the edges of the
harder rocks forming escarpments, the sheets of clay forming plains;
and on this account similar features are repeated in each of the
successive geological formations. The rivers exhibit a remarkably
close relation to the geological structure, and thus contrast with the
rivers of the Western Division. There are two main classes of
river-course--those flowing down the dip-slopes at right angles to the
strike, and cutting through opposed escarpments by deep valleys, and
those following the line of strike along a bed of easily eroded rock.
A third class of streams, tributary to the second, flows down the
steep face o