The Scottish Lowlands, which connect the Highlands with the Southern Uplands, are a plain, diversified by many hills of hard igneous rocks, covered with fertile soil, and abounding with natural advantages that have concentrated in them most of the population of Scotland. Agriculture is richly developed ; the coasting trade, oceanic commerce, and the fisheries, both local and pelagic, are of first-class importance; and the great coal and iron fields of the southwest have developed enormous industries which, start ing in the region around Glasgow, have spread eastward even to the Edinburgh district, making the Lowlands the most important manufacturing district in Great Britain outside of Yorkshire. The Southern Uplands, among which the Clyde rises, are a plateau where the heights are massed into different groups by the rivers that have excavated the valleys.
From the middle of England a broad peninsula (Wales) pushes out toward Ireland. The whole of Wales and the part of England lying to the northwest of the line from Exeter to Berwick are a highland. This hilly and mountainous region is composed of very old sedimentary rocks with masses of crystalline rocks at various centres. Thus the mountains have been partly weathered from the plateau surface into their present forms or were pushed up from below by terrestrial con vulsion. The mountains are not so high as those of Scotland. It may be said of the island as a whole that it becomes lower and flatter as it widens out toward the south. The main direc tion of the mountain ranges of England and Wales is from north to south or from northeast to southwest, and they thus interpose no ob stacles to communication with the Scottish Low lands except among the Cheviot Hills which, ex tending along the border, belong to Scotland more than to England, and helped Scotland long to maintain a separate political existence. The rail road connections between England and Scotland are still mainly around the ends of the Cheviots through Carlisle and Berwick.
The Cheviot Hills are separated from the Pen nine Chain by a low strip through which there is easy railroad communication across North Eng land between Carlisle and Newcastle. The Pen nine Chain is a succession of moors and hills of Carboniferous formation, the latter from 1000 to 2900 feet high, the backbone of Northern Eng land, extending south 150 miles, and forming the water parting between east and west flowing rivers. On both sides of the chain the coal meas ures come to the surface of the plain, forming the coal-fields of Lancashire and Staffordshire on the west and of Yorkshire on the east. The Cumbrian group of mountains, a region also known as the English Lake District, is in the northwest of England, and is joined to the Pennines by the high moorland of Shap Fell. This ring of peaks, rising to over 3000 feet, is in its scenic aspects the grandest and most beauti ful part of England. Its deep valleys have been
eroded from the original high plateau of igneous and old sedimentary rocks, and in these valleys are the long, narrow lakes that have made this district famous for its picturesque charm. The Welsh or Cambrian mountains, in which the Welsh tribes were long able to maintain an inde pendent and separate existence, cover Wales, and are mostly of very old sedimentary strata with crystalline rocks at various points. A wide band of coal measures in the south forms the great coal-field of Wales. Unlike the Scottish High lands, these mountains do not impart great rug gedness to the coast, because the rivers have brought down vast quantities of sediment, spread ing it out into delta plains and largely filling the fiords that formerly existed. The high peninsula of Devon and Cornwall, forming the extreme southwestern extension of England, is the fifth and last feature of the highlands of South Brit ain. It is separated from Wales by the Bristol Channel, while another great depression on the south, the English Channel, severs it from Brit tany, France, with which it is closely related in its crystalline and primary rocks, its high, un fertile moorland, and its climate.
To the southeast of this great highland region extend the fertile lowlands of England, less than 500 feet above sea-level as a rule, comparatively flat, composed of younger sedimentary (Mesozoic and Tertiary) rocks, the harder of which stand above the general level, forming several bands of higher ground, the oolitic and chalk bands be ing most prominent. The oolitic belt of higher ground extends to the northeast from Portland Bill in the south to Whitby in the north, form ing, among the various elevations, the Cotswold Hills and the north Yorkshire moors, the latter, nearly 1500 feet in height, being the loftiest part of the plain region of England. Directly east of this Jurassic formation and extending parallel with it is the chalk country, whose ridges of hills form the Salisbury plateau, the Chiltern Hills, and other elevations. These chalk heights also extend along the south of England (the North and South Downs), and are seen in the white cliffs fronting the English Channel and abutting on the North Sea in the North and South Forelands. Between the North and South Downs, the weald, once heavily wooded, wedge-shaped, penetrates westward from the North Sea; and between the north extending chalk lands and the North Sea extends the London Basin, low, remarkably fertile, whose coast is broken by several estuaries, among which that of the Thames is most prominent. One more distinc tive feature, about midway on the east coast of England, is the marshy expanse of the Fenland, lying almost at the level of the sea. This great plain of England, with its diversified formations, is preOminently the agricultural region of Great Britain.