Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/763

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1em  HEREFORD, an inland English county on the south Welsh border, is bounded on the N. by Salop, S. by Monmouthshire and Gloucestershire, E. by Worcestershire, and W. by Radnorshire and Brecknockshire. Its circular shape is indented by spurs of adjacent counties, and its outlying parts have by an Act of William IV. 7 and 8 been incorporated with the counties in which they are situated. Its greatest length from Ludford by Ludlow to the Doward Hills, near Monmouth, is 38 miles; its greatest breadth from Cradley to Clifford, near Hay, 35. Its area according to the census of 1871 is 532,898 statute acres, or &32 square miles. It is divided into 11 hundreds and 221 parishes, and is a bishop’s see, of which the cathedral city is the centre of the county. 1em The soil is generally marl and clay, but in various parts contains calcareous earth in mixed proportions. Westward the soil is tenacious and retentive of water ; on the east it is a stiff and often reddish clay. In the south is found a light sandy loam. The subsoil is mostly limestone, in some parts the Old Red Sandstone, and a species of red and white veined marble. Where the soil does not rest on lime- stone, it is sometimes a silicious gravel, or contains fuller’s earth and yellow ochres. Limestone, quarried at Aymestry and Nash to the north-west of the county, and at Ledbury, Woolhope, and elsewhere, is successfully applied as a manure for arable land and pasture. For the physical history of the county reference must be made to Murchi- son’s Stluria, or Symonds’s Ltecords of the Rocks, where the upheaval and denudation in the Woolhope valley and over the central dome of Haughwood and similar questions are discussed.