Excerpt from Commercial Geography of the British Isles The occupations of men, therefore, have a natural distribution. On the coast they become fishers, sailors, or traders; on the plains, farmers; on the hills, shepherds; while mining and other industries depend ing upon coal and iron spring up where these sources of natural wealth are available. Looking at a physical map of the British Isles, the south-east of Great Britain and the centre of Ireland are seen to be plains; the northern half of Great Britain and all the west and the corners of Ireland are generally mountainous, with plains of small extent. The south-east and east of Great Britain, therefore, are mainly agricultural, and the west mainly pastoral. Agriculture is more developed in Ireland on the central plain than in the mountains to the north west and south, but cattle-rearing is everywhere more important than the cultivation of the soil. This is largely due to the heavy rains, an illustration of the fact that climate as well as relief helps to deter mine the nature and distribution of occupations. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.