In the city of Gloucester and its vicinity there are several considerable manufactories of pins, which, mi nute as is the article, furnish employment to upwards of 1500 persons. A bell foundery was established there in 1500, which has been continued to the present time, and is a kind of hereditary occupation in a family of the name of Rudhall, who have carried it on for the last hundred and fifty years, and during that period have cast several thousands of bells for different churches.
The vicinity of Bristol is crowded with manufac tories of various kinds. The sugar refinery is very considerable, and produces some of the best kinds • of white sugar. Glass of all kinds for windows and for domestic purposes, is made there. The copper and brass manufactures are large establishments. Hard white soap is an article of considerable im portance : much is sent to Lopdon, and a large quantity exported to America and the West Indies. Hats, leather, saddlery, shoes, white-lead, gunpow der, earthenware, salt, snuff, and beer, are made in the city or neighbourhood of Bristol, and form the ru diments of its foreign trade, as well as administer to its domestic intercourse with the western counties, and with Wales.
The agriculture of Gloucestershire partakes of very different characters, according to the elevation, of the land. On the eastern side of the county, a district of 200,000 acres, extending over the Cots-, wold Hills, is provincially distinguished by the name, of stone brash land. This tract of country is very I undulating, but none of the summits rise to a great height, so that the whole is cultivated. In the in tervals between the ridges of hills, there are gene rally beautiful rivulets, by which the inhabitants are enabled so to irrigate their meadows, as to produce early grass for their young lambs. The hills, what ever be the surface, nave uniformly a calcareous ba sis, which admirably adapts them for the growth of sainfoin. In no part of England is that valuable grass cultivated to so great an extent, or with such boun tiful results. It has been an article of very ancient cultivation, and in this soil has the property of pro ducing hay for twenty successive years. It requires, however, great care in the first laying down, and that all other grasses, as well as weeds, be eradicat ed; after which, as it draws its nourishment from a great depth, it has little or no tendency to exhaust the soil on the surface. In process of time it be comes choked by other grasses, when the land is again returned to the arable state. It is the prac
tice of the best farmers to have one-seventh part of their land constantly bearing sainfoin. The remain ing six portions of the farm are divided pretty near ly in equal proportions between turnips, barley, clo ver, or rye-grass, wheat, peas, and oats. The prin cipal dependence for producing fertility is the large flocks of sheep which are bred here, and which are usually folded as a dressing for the turnips. It is a common practice to pare the soil, and burn it, that the weeds may be destroyed and the ashes furnish manure. The crops of barley are moderately good. Wheat is sown at very early periods, sometimes in August, but it seldom produces even a moderate crop if sowed later than September or early in Oc tober. The average produce of that grain does not exceed sixteen bushels to the acre, and it is not of the best quality. The soil is more congenial to the production of peas than to any other crop, and hence they form an important article of cultivation. The sheep of this district, for whose food, as the enumeration of the crops shows, the principal provi sion is made, are of a peculiar breed without horns, the wool rather long, and not of a very fine quality. They are said to be indigenous to these hills, but have been of late improved by crossing with other races. The Southdown sheep have recently been bred here, and are gradually acquiring a preference, as they do wherever they are introduced on soils of an inferior quality. Few parts of England have been more improved in cultivation within the last forty years than the Cotswold Hills. They have, however, in spite of this improvement, but a cold and barren appearance, owing to their being nearly destitute of trees, and to the want of verdant hedges; for the fences are almost uniformly stone walls, about four feet and a half in height. The farms are generally large, from 300 to 1200 acres, and the homesteads, as well as the cottages of the labourers, being usually -situated in the 'wallies, and, therefore, not in sight at a distance, the face of the country has a poor and depopulated aspect. The depth of the soil is scarcely more than five inches; sometimes it is however very tenacious, but the experience of the natives has taught them, that even the most clayey soils do not require frequent ploughings. At each ploughing, considerable quantities of stone rubble are brought to the surface.