The Arrangement of the Rural Population in Picardy and Flanders

Abstract

GLANCE at the x: ioo,ooo topographical maps of Northern France quickly reveals a great difference in the arrangement of rural population in Picardy and in that part of the department of Nord belonging to the Plain of Flanders. The distribution in both cases is very even, but the arrangement is radically different. Reference to the geological map shows a close connection between the arrangement in each district, and its geology and physiography. Picardy is a lonely-looking land of low, naked, rolling hills, cut by tortuous mature valleys. Here and there a village is seen, generally nestling in a hollow, and close circled by trees. Otherwise there is not a house in sight, though the greater part of the country is under cultivation. A winding belt of poplars marks a neighbouring valley, and a regular row of elms reveals a main road on the horizon. Other vegetation there is none, save an occasional dense wood of young trees, on high ground. One seldom sees old trees in France. The underlying formation almost everywhere is the chalk (Senonian) of the Upper Cretaceous, which yields a poor and shallow soil on the terraced hillsides. The climate is continental and humid, moderated by proximity to the sea in the west, but becoming more rigorous inland. The villages are compact, generally several kilometres apart, dotted over the land quite regularly, and connected by good roads, too numerous for communication alone. The map has hence a characteristic knotted and netted appearance. Owing to the poorness of the soil holdings are large, and the farmer, following the gregarious instinct of man, lives not on his farm, far from neighbours, in a melancholy country, but in the village, setting out daily with his team, one of the numerous roads serving his convenience. Though the total population of the department of Somme has declined, the agricultural section, be it noted, is on the increase. The French part of the Plain of Flanders constitutes about three-fifths of the department of Nord, and a small corner of the Pas de Calais. It stretches from the sea to the Scheldt and the Sensde. The landscape is flat and enclosed, with occasional noble vistas through the trees and hedges into green and fertile distances, dotted with red thatched or tiled cottages, and seldom broken by an undulation until the foothills of Artois are reached. The only feature of importance is the beautiful chain of residual heights stretching from Cassel to Kemmel, and studded with windmills. Ditches and hedges line the roadsides and fields; sluggish brooks, tamed and canalized streams, and long canals traverse the plain. Woods are rare, but trees abound, distributed regularly around the edges of fields and along the roadways. Not an acre of ground remains untilled, except the