The chief rivers and valleys are the Derwent, the Irthing, the Tyne (with its North and South branches, the Allendales, and Redesdale), the Wansbeck with its twin the Font, the Coquet, the Alne, the Till with its feeders the Breamish, Glen, and College, and the Tweed. The Tyne is the “coaly Tyne” only from Wylam downwards. For 19 miles (its tidal portion) it has been dredged into a small estuary,—“a river of coal, iron, and chemicals.” The rivers and streams in general are greatly diversified with numbers of rocky gorges and rich “denes.” The deepest glen-scenery is at the head of the Breamish and College burns; and the North Tyne gathers its waters from surrounding moorlands into a vale of surpassing beauty.

The coast is a succession of sands, flat tidal rocks, and low cliffs. Its bays are edged by blown sandhills; its borders are severely wind-swept. Several islands lie over against it. 1 oly Island, the classic Lindisfarne, 1051 acres in extent, but half “links” and sandbanks, is annexed to the mainland and accessible to conveyances every tide. The Farne Islands are a group of rocky islets farther south, —the scene of many saintly austerities, and of the nobler devotion of Grace Darling.

Geology.— The core of the county, in a geological aspect, is the northern Cheviots from Redesdale head nearly to the Tweed. Its oldest rocks are gritty and slaty beds of Silurian age, about the head of the rivers Rede and Coquet and near the Breamish south of Ingram,—a part of the great Silurian mass of the southern uplands of Scotland. Even before the times of the Old Red Sandstone these rocks had been crushed and folded, upraised into a continental land, and much wasted. The largest hollows in that ancient continent held the great lakes in which the “Old Red” was deposited. Volcanic activity near one of the lake-group (now to be known as Lake Cheviot) resulted in the felspathic porphyrites passing into the syenites and granites that form the mass of the northern Cheviots.

Round this core there now lie relays of Carboniferous strata dipping east and south, much faulted and repeated in places, but passing into Coal-measures and Magnesian Limestone in the south-eastern part of the county. The dawn of the Carboniferous ages saw the volcanic piles of the Cheviots becoming shapeless with waste. Then ensued a general settling down of the land, the gathering of a long series of deposits around its subsiding borders, the burying of Cheviot-land, and the gradual formation of the whole great succession of the Carboniferous system. The builders thereof were three. After every sufficient subsidence the limestone sea that covered Derbyshire sent incursions of marine life northwards; the waste of the land in the north then spread out in sheets of sand and silt; and over the mud-flats thus prepared came slow migrations of dense plant-growth. Limestones, sandstones, shales, and coals were the result; and the whole system now consists of—(1) the Carboniferous Limestone series in three divisions, first detected by the accurate eye of George Tate of Alnwick; (2) the Millstone Grit; and (3) the Coal-measures. Lowest in Northumberland lies Tate’s Tuedian group, the first envelope of sinking Cheviot-land. Some reddish shore-like conglomerates lie in places at its base, as at Roddam Dene; its shales are often tinged with distemper greens; its coals are scarcely worthy of the name; its limestones are thin, except near Rothbury; and its marine fossils are few and incursive. The Tuedian group is overlaid by the Carbonaceous group; its shales are carbonaceous-grey, its coals, though mostly small, very numerous, its limestones often plant-limestones, and its calcareous matter much diffused. Upon this lies the Calcareous group; its lime occurs in well-individualized marine beds, cropping up to the surface in green-vested strips; its fossils are found in recurrent cycles, with the limestones and coals forming their extremes. These three groups now range round the northern Cheviots in curved belts broadening southwards, and occupy nearly all the rolling ground between the Tweed and the South Tyne, the sandstones forming the chief eminences. The middle division becomes thinner and more like the Coal-measures in passing northwards, and the upper division, thinning also, loses many of its limestones. The Millstone Grit is a characterless succession of grits and shales. The Coal-measures possess the same zone-like arrangement that prevails in the Limestone series, but are without limestones. They also are divided, very artificially, into three groups The lowest, from the Brockwell seam downwards, has some traces of Gannister beds, and its coal-seams are but thin. The famous Hutton collection of plants was made chiefly from the roof-shales of two seams,—the Bensham and the Low Main. The unique Atthey collection of fishes and Amphibia comes from the latter. The Coal-measures lie along the coast in a long triangle, of which the base, at the Tyne, is produced westwards on to the moors south of that river, where it is wedged against lower beds on the south by a fault. The strata within the triangle give signs of departing from the easterly dip that has brought them where they are, and along a line between its apex (near Amble) and an easterly point in its base (near Jarrow) they turn up north-eastwards, promising coal-crops under the sea.

The top of the Coal-measures is wanting. After a slight tilting of the strata and the denudation that removed it, the Permian rocks were deposited, consisting of Magnesian Limestone, a thin fish-bed below it, and yellow sands and some Red Sandstone (with plants of Coal-measure species) at the base. These rocks are now all but removed. They form Tynemouth rock, and lie notched-in against the 90- fathom dyke at Cullercoates, and again are touched (the base only) at Seaton Sluice. No higher strata have been preserved. The chief faults of the county extend across it. Its igneous rocks, other than the Cheviot porphyrites and a few contemporaneous traps in the lowest Carboniferous, are all intrusive. An irregular sheet of basalt forced between planes of bedding (perhaps at the close of the Carboniferous period) forms the crag-making line of the Great Whinsill, which, with many shifts, breaks, and gaps, extends from Greenhead near Gilsland to the Kyloe Hills. Numbers of basalt dykes cross the county, and were probably connected with the plateau of Miocene volcanic rocks in the Hebrides. Everywhere the Glacial period has left rocks rounded and scored, and rock-fragments from far and near rubbed up into boulder-clay. The glaciers at first held with the valleys, but as the ice-inundation grew they spread out into one sheet,—the Cheviot tops, heavily ice-capped, alone rising above it. Two great currents met in confluence around these hills,—one from across the western watershed, the other skirting the coast from the north. Boulders from Galloway, Criffel, the English lake district, and other places adjacent, and from the Lammermuirs and Berwickshire, lie in their track. Of moraines there are only a few towards the hills. The “great submergence” has left no unequivocal signs of its presence. Glaciated shell-fragments have been detected at Tynemouth. Laminated brick clays occur among the boulder-clays. Sheets and mounds of gravel of the nature of kames exist here and there on the low grounds, and stretch in a chain over the low watershed between Haltwhistle and Gilsland, sparsely dotting also some more upland valleys. An upper boulder-clay, containing flints, skirts the coast.

The older valleys are all pre-Glacial, and may date from the Miocene period. They are much choked up with Glacial deposits, and lie so deep below the surface that, if they were cleared-out arms of the sea, one of them, 140 feet deep at Newcastle, would extend for miles inland. After the departure of the glaciers the streams here and there wandered into new positions, and hence arises a great variety of smooth slope and rocky gorge. In the open country atmospheric waste has hollowed out the shales at their outcrops, leaving the sandstones, &c., as protruding “edges,” roughened here and there into crags. In the lower grounds, where this surface-dissection first began, the “edges” have much run together; on the heights, whose turn came last, they are often prominent and crest-like, but have glacier-rounded brows. Many old tarns are now sheeted over with peat. The sloping peat-fields are often the sites of straggling birch-woods, now buried.

Minerals, &c.— The main portion of the great northern coal-field that extends into Northumberland is an uneven triangle, with its base stretching 14 miles inland from the mouth of the Tyne, and its apex on the coast 24 miles northwards. There are eighteen or twenty seams of workable thickness, all of them of varieties known as bituminous or “caking” coal, amounting in the aggregate to nearly 60 feet in thickness. The familiar “Wallsend” was the product of a seam now worked out (the High Main), and its name has sunk into a trade term. The Low Main or Hutton seam ranks first in thickness and value; it runs nearly through the whole length of the northern coal-field, and yields at one point or another the best description of three varieties of coal, viz., household, gas, and steam coals,—in Northumberland chiefly steam coal. The seams below it, including five seams averaging about a yard in thickness, are still un worked at Newcastle. The best coking coals are furnished from the lower seams. Three little coal-basins lie against a fault on the moors south of the Tyne. In the Limestone series there also exist coal-seams of some value, worked here and there, generally singly and for land sale purposes. The Scremerston lower coals, eight of which are workable seams with an aggregate thickness of 23 feet, form a little coal-field in the Carbonaceous group in the north of the county. Numberless little seams are dug into by farmers and shepherds for their own use, chiefly in the same group in the southern half of the county.

According to the mineral statistics the output of coal from the 176 collieries worked in Northumberland in 1882 was 14,518,789 tons, as against 36,299,597 tons from the whole coal-field, and 156,499,977 tons from the United Kingdom. The net quantity of coal in Northumberland available for the future was estimated before the Coal Commission in 1870 as 2,576,000,000 tons, besides 403,000,000 tons under the sea within 2 miles of land. About 350 millions of tons have since been realized. The rate of production is increasing annually.

The “lead-measures” in Northumberland chiefly lie in South Tynedale and Allendale, and belong to the Upper Limestone series or Yoredale rocks. From these lead-mines in 1882 there were raised 6817 tons of ore, having a value of £54,719. The product of the ore was 5252 tons of lead and 9547 ounces of silver. The industry has recently suffered from the effects of foreign competition.

The Cleveland ironstone and cheap foreign import have repressed iron-mining in Northumberland. An abundance of nodular calcareous ironstone in the Upper Limestone series awaits future development. For many years a shale bed at Redesdale furnished Sir W. G. Armstrong with some of his best materials, but it was abandoned in 1877.

Among other mineral products are building freestones in profusion; millstone grits, not at all restricted to the strata bearing the name; fireclays, chiefly of value among the Coal-measures; brick clays from glacial beds; and disintegrated shales. The Whinsill yields hard paving-stones and kerbstones; Newcastle grindstones, from a hard sandstone near the town, are as familiar as “Wallsend”; and limekilns are numerous in the broad belt occupied by the upper limestones. The uplands are rich in springs issuing from the sandstones and limestones. Chalybeate springs or “red wells” abound; “sulphur wells” (sulphuretted hydrogen) are by no means rare.

Natural History.— The fauna and flora of the county have been worked out with a care and completeness chiefly due to the Naturalists’ Field Clubs of Tyneside and Berwickshire. The catalogue of plants in Northumberland (with Durham) contains 936 species out of the 1425 of the British list, Ireland excluded. The facies of the flora is intermediate between the northern and southern types of the island. Forty-six species enter Northumberland from the south which do not reach Scotland. There is a distinct preponderance of damp-loving kinds. No plants are restricted to the county. Numerous aliens, enumerated as 117 species, grow upon the large ballast-hills beside the Tyne and elsewhere, and there are 87 other “casual introductions.” The cloudberry ripens on most of the watershed hills above 1250 feet.

The richness of bird-life in the county is accounted for by the situation of the coast in a frequented track of migration to and from the north, and by the diversity of its own physical features. Of the entire catalogue of British birds, in all about 395 species, two-thirds (267) have been met in Northumberland and Durham, 91 of which are residents, 40 spring and autumn migrants that come to nest, 54 autumn and winter visitants, and 79 casual visitants. Moorfowl abound on the fells, though less numerously than of old.

Among the larger fauna of the county are the half-wild white cattle of Chillingham Park, the representatives, according to the best authorities, of the aboriginal cattle of the British forests, and degenerated descendants of the great Urus, or Bos primigenius. Climate.— The climate is bracing and healthy. In spring east winds prevail over the whole county. The lambing season in the higher uplands is fixed for the latter half of April, and is even then often too early. In summer and autumn west winds are general. The mean temperature in the shade at Alnwick and North Shields in the winter and summer quarters of the year, during four years of observation, was as follows Alnwick, summer 52° · 9, winter 38° ' 9; North Shields, summer 55° ' 1, winter 39° ' 0. At Greenwich during the same years it stood as—summer 59°'9, winter 39° · 4. The rainfall gradually increases as the country rises from the coast. The average rainfall during the six years 1877-82 was : —at Tynemouth (65 feet above the sea), 27‘78 inches; in Newcastle (105 feet), 30 ' 28 inches; near Belford (240 feet), 30'41 inches; near Haltwhistle (380 feet), 40'41 inches; near Rothbury (400 feet), 37 ’ 50 inches; at Alienheads (1353 feet), 47'65 inches; and at Broadstruther (1672 feet), about five miles north of the Cheviot, 60'93 inches. East winds, in summer, bring rain to the interior. The smell from the coal-field, the lighter grime of which is detected as far as Cumberland, is taken by the shepherd for a sign of wet.

Governmental and Ecclesiastical Divisions.— Northumberland comprises the nine wards (answering to hundreds and wapentakes) of Bamburgh, Glendale, Coquetdale, Morpeth, Tynedale, Castle, Norhamshire, Islandshire, and Bedlingtonshire. The last three formed detached portions of Durham until 1844. It contains 76 mother-parishes and 162 benefices, together forming (with Alston and Nenthead in Cumberland) the diocese of Newcastle, erected in 1882. There are 541 civil parishes in which poor-rate is separately levied. The county has one court of quarter-sessions, is divided into 13 petty and special sessional divisions, and for parliamentary purposes into a northern and a southern division, each of which returns two members. Berwick-upon-Tweed (which has been joined to this county for election purposes) and Newcastle-upon-Tyne have separate courts of quarter-sessions and commissions of the peace, and, together with Morpeth and Tynemouth, the latter of which has also a commission of the peace, are municipal and parliamentary boroughs. Berwick and Newcastle each return two members, and Morpeth and Tynemouth each one.

Population and People. — The population in 1881 numbered 434,086 persons, 215,882 males and 218,204 females,—showing an increase since 1871 of 47,440 persons, and of 256,008 since the first census in 1801. The average number of persons to an acre was 0'34, and of acres to a person 2'97. The number of inhabited houses was 70,682. The population of its chief towns was as follows:—Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 145,359 (or with Gateshead upon the Durham side, 211,162); North Shields and Tynemouth, 44,118; Berwick-on-Tweed, 13,998; Alnwick, 7440; Morpeth, 6946; and Hexham, 5919. The Tyne ports are rapidly becoming one continuous town. Walker had a population of 9522 persons, Wallsend 6515, and Willington Quay 5105. Persons engaged as miners or in mine service numbered 21,607, of whom 20,752 λvere coal-miners. Persons engaged in agriculture numbered 18,901.

In physique the Northumbrian is stalwart and robust, and seldom corpulent. The people have mostly grey eyes, brown hair, and good complexions. The inhabitants of the fishing villages appear to be Scandinavian; and parts of the county probably contain some admixture of the old Brit-Celt, and a trace of the Gipsy blood of the Faas of Yetholm. The natives have fine characteristics: they are clean, thrifty, and plodding, honest and sincere, shrewd, and very independent. Their virtues lie rather in solidity than in aspiration.

Northumbrian speech is characterized by a “rough vibration of the soft palate” or pharynx in pronouncing the letter r, well known as the burr, a peculiarity extending to the town and liberties of Berwick, and absent only in a narrow strip along the north-west. Over the southern part of the county there is the same duplication of vowel-sounds, such as “peöl” for “pool,” that is met in the English countiesadjacent. Many charming Old-English forms of speech strike the ear, such as “to butch a beef,” i.e., to kill a bullock, and curious inversions, such as “they not can help.” There is the Old-English distinction in the use of “thou” to familiars and “ye” to superiors.

Ownership of Land.— According to the Owners of Land Returns 1873, the distribution of land-property in Northumberland was as follows:—there were 22 proprietors of more than 10,000 acres; of 100 and less than 1000, 507; of 10 and less than 100, 771; of 1 and less than 10, 820; and of less than 1, 10,036. The gross estimated rental was £2,144,743. Six proprietors held lands exceeding 20,000 acres. The duke of Northumberland, the largest land-proprietor in England, held 181,616 acres; the earl of Tankerville, Chillingham Park, held 28,930; Sir John Swinburne of Capheaton, 28,057; Walter C. Selby of Biddlestone, 25,327; Sir W. C. Trevelyan (now Sir Charles) of Wallington, 21,342; and the lords of the Admiralty, who held the old Derwentwater estate, 20,642. The mansions and parks attached to these estates are all beautiful or interesting. Biddlestone is uplying, but in some respects is the original of Scott’s Osbaldistone Hall.

Agriculture, Ac.— More than half of the county is pastoral. South of the river Coquet there...