county in the South Midland Division of England, is of a form which has been considered as somewhat resembling the human ear. The concave part is occupied by the county of Huntingdon. Its boundary is not easily traced in traversing the country, owing to the want of any marked natural features in the upland part, and the great change that has taken place in the course of the rivers and drains in the fen districts. It is divided by a part of the old course of the river Ouse into two nearly equal portions, constituting the county of Cambridge proper and the Isle of Ely, and by the last survey is found to contain about 548,480 acres, of which 248,480 belong to the Isle. Most of the land is arable, but the several parts differ from each other materially in character.

The whole of the Isle, and some portion of the other lands, form part of the great level of the fens, called the Bedford Level from the efforts made by the last earl and the successive dukes of Bedford to promote its drainage. During the Roman dominion in Britain this extensive district seems to have consisted chiefly of wet forests, intersected by stagnant rivers and marshes. That it was not altogether a morass at that time is shown by the great roads formed through it by that enterprising people. These are now covered in most places by many feet of peat soil, so that they are only to be seen when deep drains are cut in the mosses. Afterwards, during the Saxon, and especially the Norman periods, the whole was flooded by the silting up of the outfall of the rivers. This state of things became worse and worse, until, in the reign of Charles I., the whole district had become a number of islands, surrounded by an almost constant flood of water. Since that time continual endeavours have been made to reclaim the flooded lands; and this has been pretty completely effected by embanking the rivers and other streams that convey the upland waters, and pumping the fen water into them by the aid of steam, which has superseded the numerous windmills formerly less effectively employed for the purpose. The singular changes which took place in the district during its neglected state may be illustrated by the fact, that at one period the rivers Nen, Ouse, and Cam, which poured their waters on to the level, all found their way to the sea at Wisbech; that subsequently, by the formation of a cut which still conveys the latter two conjointly by the Little Ouse to Lynn, the three took their course to that last mentioned town, and the Nen became so sluggish as to have no definite channel, but found its way through various and tortuous drains. At the present time, the Nen alone flows by an artificial course to Wisbech; and the old channel of the Great Ouse from Littleport to Wisbech is so completely filled up as to be only traceable by a bed of silt, and a slight but broad depression of the land. The Ouse formerly flowed from Earith, near which place it enters the county, to a spot some miles to the south of Ely, to be joined by the Cam; but is now conducted by a great artificial cut, called the Bedford river, in a direct course of more than twenty miles to Denver, in Norfolk; thus leaving many miles of its ancient channel nearly dry.

This fen country is now so well drained that almost the whole of it has become highly valuable land, much of which bears heavy crops of wheat. Few things can be more interesting to the observant traveller than a journey across this district by the Eastern Counties railway, which either by its main line or its branches passes through the fens in several directions. The fields divided by wet ditches, the constantly recurring bridges over the great drains, the passing of the artificial rivers, the high state of cultivation, the almost absolutely level country, present such a scene as is not to be found elsewhere in Britain. When contemplating it, we cannot avoid being struck by the success which has attended the application of great skill and con- summate energy and perseverance to the work of rendering available for agricultural purposes this extensive and once nearly useless tract.

Most of the fen country is based upon a bed of clay of great thickness, consisting of what are denominated by geologists the Gault, Oxford clay, and Kimmeridge clay. These, by the almost total absence of the strata of stone that usually separate them, have become only distinguishable by their imbedded fossils. Above the clay there is a deposit of peat of variable thickness, but usually of many feet. In those parts which formerly constituted the fen islands, there are great masses of gravel, sand, and sometimes drift-clay. The chief of these islands is that upon which the city of Ely is placed; and it is deserving of remark, that that city, which is now a central railway station, was at no distant date so inaccessible by land that the bishop always employed a boat when he was desirous of visiting Cambridge.

The drainage of the peat has deprived it of its former spongy character, and the underlying clay having been raised and mixed with it, they have together formed a highly fertile soil. With the exception of a very few and small pieces of unreclaimed land, the whole fen district is now as well farmed as almost any part of Britain.

We have not space to enter upon the highly interesting history of the drainage works, and must refer for full information upon the subject, to Dugdale's "Embanking," Wells's "Bedford Level," and a valuable paper in the 8th volume of the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England. See Bedford Level.

Until a recent period the Isle of Ely was a separate jurisdiction, forming a palatinate belonging to the bishop of that see, but it is now combined in all essential particulars with the other part of the county.

Formerly ague was very prevalent in the fens, but drainage has much diminished its frequency, although attacks of it are still not uncommon, both there and in the bordering villages. Otherwise, it is far from being an unhealthy district.

The upland parts of Cambridgeshire, or the "Highlands" as they are called by the inhabitants, form a tolerably level tract, only broken by low hills of chalk on the side adjoining Essex and Suffolk. At the foot of the hills the lower bed of chalk is still quarried under the name of clunch. It was formerly much used for building purposes, as being easily worked, and very durable when protected from the weather. Much of the elaborate sculpture in Ely Cathedral is formed of it. The district adjoining these hills is based on a shallow bed of clunch, lying over the Gault, but separated from it by a thin layer of the upper greensand formation, in which there are many nodules of phosphate of lime. The surface of this tract is also varied by extensive deposits of gravel, and is generally fertile and well cultivated. The sheep-walks which formerly occupied the chalk-hills are now converted into arable land, and only those small portions of Newmarket Heath are left unbroken which are required for racing and training grounds.

The country extending from near Cambridge to the western edge of the county, lies at a rather higher level than the district intervening between it and the chalk-hills. It consists of a cold, wet, and unprofitable drift-clay not forming part of any of the regular strata. Much of this land was brought under the plough during the prevalence of a high price for wheat, but is now (1854) scarcely found to repay the expense of cultivation.

There is nothing peculiar in the agriculture of Cambridgeshire; for the local crops of hemp, flax, and saffron, for which it was once noted, have nearly or quite disappeared. The drainage of wet meadows near Cottenham has tended greatly to reduce the quantity of cheese made there. The same cause has lessened the quantity and injured the quality of the butter supplied to Cambridge market.

The whole of the upper district, or county proper of Cambridge, is traversed by numerous brooks, which combine to form the river Cam. One of the chief tributaries of this river (called the Ree) rises on the borders of Hertford, Bedford, and Cambridge shires, the other (named the Grant) has its source in Essex. These waters combine at a short distance above Cambridge, and flowing by Ely to Littleport, in the ancient channel of the Great Ouse, are thence conducted by the artificial cut already mentioned into the Little Ouse, and together with that stream reach the sea at Lynn. Even in the higher parts of the country many of the brooks do not run in their natural channels, for the fall is so slight that without careful and constant attention to them they would often stagnate and flood the land.

We have already spoken under the head of Cambridge of the buildings in that town, but must not omit to mention the beautiful cathedral at Ely. That church has been recently restored nearly throughout. Its nave is in the Norman, the quire is in the early English and decorated styles. Although the monastery was founded at Ely in the year 673, and restored in 970, it is confidently believed that no traces of buildings older than the Norman part of the cathedral now exist. The so-called conventual church is certainly not Saxon, and has been shown by Professor Willis to have probably been the infirmary of the monks. There are many highly interesting parish churches scattered over the county.

Cambridgeshire seems to have been rather thickly inhabited by the Romans. Numerous remains of their roads and villas, as well as many coins and much pottery, have been found. Several of their great lines of road passed through the county, and may still be faintly traced. Two of these crossed each other in the Roman station at Cambridge, and are usually called by antiquaries "The Akeman Street" and "The Via Devana." Another traversed the fens from Denver in Norfolk to near Peterborough. The "Ermine Street" and "Icknield Way" pass for some distance through the county, but they are probably tracks used by the ancient Britons. The Romans formed great embankments against the sea along the shore of the Wash, from Lynn by Wisbech into Lincolnshire, which are still very conspicuous, although now usually at a considerable distance from the coast. They also seem probably to have had a navigable canal along the edge of the fens, in continuation southwards into this county of the "Car Dyke."

Whilst mentioning the antiquities, it would not be right to omit all notice of the four great boundary ditches, formed apparently before the time of the Romans, each of which extends for several miles across the open chalk district, from the fens to the ancient woodland. Of these, the Devil's Ditch, upon Newmarket Heath, is the best known. It is also the largest, although one of the others is longer. Its length is about seven miles, and it consists of a ditch with a rampart on one side, formed of the excavated soil. The height of the bank is about eighteen feet above the level of the county, thirty above the bottom of the ditch, and twelve feet in width at the top. (Babington's Ancient Cambridgeshire.)

Much emigration has taken place from this county, and it is believed that the population is not now superabundant, although there are a few unemployed men in some of the country parishes and in the town of Cambridge.

In 1831 the population was 143,955, of whom 72,031 were males, and 71,924 females; in 1841 it amounted to 164,459, of whom 81,611 were males, and 82,848 females; and in 1851, to 185,405, of whom 92,699 were males, and 92,706 females.