An agricultural district, like a little kingdom, has its own capital city.
The district itself is as well defined as if a frontier line had been
marked out around it, with sentinels and barriers across the roads, and
special tolls and duties. Yet an ordinary traveller, upon approaching,
fails to perceive the difference, and may, perhaps, drive right through
the territory without knowing it. The fields roll on and rise into the
hills, the hills sink again into a plain, just the same as elsewhere;
there are cornfields and meadows; villages and farmsteads, and no visible
boundary. Nor is it recognised upon the map. It does not fit into any
political or legal limit; it is neither a county, half a county, a
hundred, or police division. But to the farmer it is a distinct land. If
he comes from a distance he will at once notice little peculiarities in
the fields, the crops, the stock, or customs, and will immediately inquire
if it be not such and such a place that he has heard of. If he resides
within thirty miles or so he will ever since boyhood have heard 'the
uplands' talked of as if it were a separate country, as distinct as
France. Cattle from the uplands, sheep, horses, labourers, corn or hay, or
anything and anybody from thence, he has grown up accustomed to regard
almost as foreign.

There is good reason, from an agricultural point of view, for this. The
district, with its capital city, Fleeceborough, really is distinct, well
marked, and defined. The very soil and substrata are characteristic. The
products are wheat, and cattle, and sheep, the same as elsewhere, but the
proportions of each, the kind of sheep, the traditionary methods and farm
customs are separate and marked. The rotation of crops is different, the
agreements are on a different basis, the very gates to the fields have
peculiar fastenings, not used in other places. Instead of hedges, the