This county yields at once the richest fruits of the soil and the most practically valuable mineral productions. The total acreage of the county, exclusive of roads and rivers, is 431,616; and by far the larger portion of this surface is devoted to AGRICULTURE. According to Mr. Fowler’s valuation, made in the year 1842, the total value of property assessable to the county rate is £912,863; of which £263,000 may be taken as representing the rental of buildings and land in the towns and manufacturing districts, leaving £650,000 as the annual value of agricultural property. In this statement the city of Worcester, the rateable rental of which is about £75,000, is, of course, not included. If it is assumed that 380,000 acres are arable and grass land, that will probably be an approximation to the truth. In the total absence of agricultural statistics any attempt to compute the present produce of the county would be quite out of the question, but that it has greatly increased of late years cannot be doubted. A gentleman, upon whose practical knowledge and information the most entire reliance may be placed, informs me that the average yield per acre throughout the Vale of Evesham is now about 27 bushels in wheat, 32 in barley, 40 in oats, 27 in beans; and that there has been an increase of fully 15 per cent. in the wheat and barley crops, and of 10 per cent. in the bean crop, within the last 20 or 25 years. Hops, however, for which this county has been and still is so famous, have to a great extent gone out of cultivation; and while at the beginning of the century some 6,000 acres were devoted to their growth, there are now not more than 1,625 acres of hop plantation. With regard to the general progress of agriculture, the half-century may be divided into three periods. During the war the high prices of provisions stimulated improvement, and much drainage was then done, though in so rude and unscientific a way that it has since been found necessary to replace a great deal of it. The Earl of Plymouth, the Earl of Coventry, and A. Lechmere, Esq., in this county, very early bestowed great pains on the drainage of their estates. From 1814 to 1830 agriculture, comparatively speaking, was at a stand still; {6} but during the last twenty years many and signal improvements have been made in its science. Many persons still living can recollect whole hamlets and villages in this county in which there was scarce an enclosure; and nearly the whole of the land was cultivated in common by the resident farmers, to each one of whom would be assigned a certain quantity in wheat, barley, vetches, and fallow. Between each ploughed land was left a strip of mere, into which the surface water from the adjoining ridges all sank and rendered it little better than a constant bog, which diseased the few poor sheep grazing upon it and made the ague a common and hereditary ill to farmer and labourer alike. The amount of