The numbers from Durham and Northumberland on the one hand, and from Devon and Somerset on the other are much larger than those from certain nearer counties, such as Stafford, Yorkshire, and Lancaster.

The chief determinate of the force of attraction, distance from the centre, is in these cases qualified by two other considerations.

In the case of Durham and Northumberland a large navigable seaboard affords greater facility and cheapness of transport, an important factor in the mobility of labour.

In the case of Devon and Somerset the absence of the counter-attraction of large provincial cities drives almost the whole of its migratory folk to London, whereas in Yorkshire and Lancashire and the chief Midland manufacturing counties the attraction of their own industrial centres acts more powerfully in their immediate neighbourhood than the magic of London itself.

Thus, if we were to take the map of England and mark it so as to represent the gravitation towards cities, we should find that every remotest village was subject to a number of weaker or stronger, nearer or more distant, forces, which were helping to draw off its rising population into the eddy of city life.