Wellmann Imre szerk.: A Magyar Mezőgazdasági Múzeum Közleményei 1971-1972 (Budapest, 1973)

Minchinton, Walter E.: The agricultural regions of England and Wales

products/' Other towns exerted market influence over their immediate countryside and in the eighteenth century it has been argued that Bristol was exercising a metropolitan influence in the south-west of England, whose production of agricultural goods was to a considerable degree conditioned by the needs of the 'central place'.

5 The great improvement of transport facilities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have tended towards the creation of a national market. Market gardening still tends to some degree to be carried on in the neighbourhood of certain towns but in most cases specialisation has gone further so that Kent and the Vale of Evesham concentrate on fruit production. Cornwall on the early potato trade and so on. Useful though the economic region is as a basis of analysis for some purposes, it provides too imprecise a picture of farming practice to be more generally useful. For convenience, from the sixteenth century many writers have used the major administrative division, the county, as the basis for their discussions and this practice still continues. An obvious advantage in employing this administrative framework is that the boundaries of the selected area, the county, are well-established and provide a clear means of indicating the area under discussion without involving complicated problems of definition. Further, apart from private and central collections to some extent, historical records tend to be collected together according to county in record offices and other depositories. The earliest topographical accounts, which inevitably paid a great deal of attention to agriculture as the dominant sector of the economy, usually dealt with a particular county. Good examples are provided bv WILLIAM DUGDALE's account of Warwickshire (1656) and JOHN MORTON'S of Northamptonshire (1712). In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the Board of Agriculture reports were county reports while the Royal Agricultural Society later offered prizes for the best descriptions of English agriculture by county. These prize essays were printed in the Society's Journal for 38 counties between 1845 and 1869.

6 More recently the Land Utilisation Surveys

7 drawn up ^FISHER, FREDERICK J. The Development of the London Food Market, 1540— 1640. Economic History Review. V: 1935. 46—64, reprinted in: Essays in economic history, ed. Eleanora M. Carus-Wilson, I. London 1954. 135—151. 5MINCHINTON, WALTER E. Bristol — Metropolis of the West in the Eighteenth Tenturv. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, V: 1954. 69—89. (i

The complete list is as follows: Bedfordshire, 1857; Berkshire, 1860; Buckinghamshire, 1855: Cambridgeshire, 1847;- Cheshire, 1845; Cornwall, 1846; Cumberland, 1852; Derbyshire, 1853; Devon, 1849; Dorset, 1854; Durham, 1856; Essex, 1845: Gloucestershire, 1850; Hampshire, 1861; Herefordshire, 1853; Hertfordshire, 1864; Huntingdonshire, 1868; Kent, 1846; Lancashire, 1849; Leicestershire, 1866; Lincolnshire, 1851; Middlesex, 1869; Northamptonshire, 1852; Northumberland, 1848; Nottinghamshire, 1846; Oxfordshire, 1854; Shropshire, 1858; Somerset, 1850; Suffolk, 1848; Surrey, 1853; Sussex, 1850; Warwickshire, 1856; Westmorland, 1868; Wiltshire, 1845; Worcestershire, 1867; Yorkshire, East Riding, 1849, North Riding, 1849, West Riding, 1849. This list does not include R. N. BACON's report on Norfolk. It won a prize but was so voluminous that it was published separately as The report on the agriculture of Norfolk (London. 1844). Nor does it include the prize reports on North Wales. (1846) and South Wales (1850). 7The Land of Britain: the Report of the Land Utilisation Survey of Britain, ed. Lawrence Dudley Stamp. (Geographical Publications, 92 parts in 9 volumes, 1937—41). Ill