HH62/2/RENFRE/7

Transcription

[Page] 6

as a manufacturing county; in some degree to its suburban position
in relation to Glasgow. Its industries are varied, the principal being
the various processes connected with the manufacture of cotton;
while it is in considerable repute as a dairy county. There are also
certain shale pits and oil works in the centre of the County.
The physical characteristics of the County are easily summarised.
Its general declination, on the large scale, is from the south north-
wards to the valley of the Clyde. It has been customary to describe
the County as consisting, topographically, of three districts. An
upper one, with a medium elevation of from 500 to 600 feet above
the sea level, attaining its highest elevation in the south-east, in the
Parish of Eaglesham, and in the west, where the highest elevation in
the County is reached by the peak of Misty Law, 1663 feet above
the sea level. To this high district, lying mostly on gravel or whin-
stone (trap), or 'rotten' (fissured) whinstone, is assigned an area of
101,600 acres, and this, while partly heath and moss, yields a large
proportion of excellent pasture-land. This is the southern zone of
the County, and includes most of the Parishes of Eaglesham,
Mearns, Neilston, part of the Abbey Parish, and part of Loch-
winnoch, Kilbarchan, Kilmalcolm, and Inverkip. The middle
district, of moderate elevation, extends to about 40,600 acres,
generally of gently rising ground, and includes the Parishes of
Cathcart, Eastwood, parts of Abbey Parish, Inchinnan, Erskine,
Houston, Kilbarchan, and Renfrew. The soil here is, generally
speaking, a thin earth, sometimes on a gravelly, often on a 'till'
bottom (composed of rocky detritus), with loamy hollows; here there
is little land which is not arable. The characteristics of this district
are 'little hills gently swelling in endless variety, interspersed with
various coloured copses, often watered at the bottom by winding
rivulets.' * The low country consists chiefly of the level tract
situated to the north of Paisley, comprehending a considerable por-
tion of the parishes of Abbey, Renfrew, Inchinnan, Erskine, Houston
and Kilbarchan, and extends to about 12,000 acres. Ϯ In this district
the rock is deeply overlaid with moss, sand, gravel or clay, the soil,
or upper layer, consisting generally of a rich, deep loam, 'apparently
a deposition of vegetable mould from the higher parts of the
country.' ‡ The geological features of the county are thus summar-

* Chalmers' Caledonia; published by Alex. Gardner, Paisley.
Ϯ These are the measurements of a period antecedent to the Ordnance Survey.
‡ New Statistical Account.

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ised:- 'Renfrewshire is the north-west corner of the great coalfield
of Scotland. The coal measures are all in the N. E. division of the
County; the old red sandstone girdles it on the seashore from Kelly
to Port Glasgow; all the rest are traps or igneous rocks of various
descriptions. If a line be drawn from the Cloch Lighthouse to the
extremity of Eaglesham, a distance of about 31 miles, the whole is of
the whin formation. Generally speaking, the highest lands in the
most hilly districts are composed of igneous rock.'
Renfrewshire is a well watered country. The airs rising off the
Gulf Stream and striking the line of hills to the southward, discharge
their moisture as rain, thus giving birth among the hills to a thousand
'burns' or rivulets. To this circumstance it is no doubt due that the
cotton industry took root in the country, a plentiful supply of water
being necessary to the open-air system of calico-bleaching formerly in
vogue. Curiously enough, for a sea-board county, all the consider-
able streams, the White Cart, Black Cart, and Gryffe, with their
various tributaries, converge to one common point of outfall into the
Clyde, below Inchinnan Bridge.
A reverend chronicler, in the 'Statistical Account,' describes his
Parish as having three separate and distinct climates! It may, there-
fore, be permissible for me to allege that while the climate of the
County, generally, may be described as equable, with a rainfall above
the average, it may be distinguished, according to locality, as of three
varieties. Some observers might be inclined to associate a particular
quality of climate with each of the three districts above defined;
but it appears to me that the climate of the middle district is simply
intermediate between that of the higher and lower, and has no
particular characteristic of its own. Unfortunately there are no
scientific records to which I can refer in support of the system of
climatology I suggest. Very careful and precise meteorological
records are kept by Mr. McLean, of the Paisley Observatory (107
ft. above ordnance datum), and Mr. Wilson, at the Greenock Water-
works (233 ft.), but these elevations and localities are not sufficiently
distinct to serve as a basis for a system of comparative meteorology
for the county. For such a purpose, and to demonstrate scientifically
the three differently characterized climates, which I believe to exist in
the county, one would require to have a meteorological station at,
say, Eaglesham, or above Newton-Mearns; another at Inkerman or
Blackstoun; and a third at Wemyss Bay. I believe that the first
would indicate a greater rainfall, a less degree of humidity of the