Cylchgronau Cymru

European countries. One of the most important papers is 'The Competitive Position of British Agriculture', which was an attempt to compare agri- cultural prices in Britain with those prevailing in other European countries. The type of exercise carried out in this paper not only provides a measure of the level of agricultural support in Britain, but is essential to a proper assessment of the implications of many of the policy prescriptions which Professor Nash advocates. This volume is a distinguished addition to the limited amount of literature available on the economic aspects of agricultural policy. It should be of interest, however, not only to agricultural economists, but to students of policy generally. D. EIRIAN L. THOMAS Swansea THE TOWNS OF WALES. By Harold Carter. University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 1965. Pp. 362. 42s. Professor R. E. Dickinson once remarked that 'the geographical study of urban settlement is concerned with four main problems; first, the physical and cultural conditions that were involved in the origin of the nucleus of the settlement; second, the reactions of this nucleus in its functional and morphological development to the impact of historical events; third, the life and organization of the contemporary settlement viewed areally both as a whole and with respect to differentiations within it; fourth, the interrelations between the settlement and its surrounding territory'. It is to this range of questions that Mr. Harold Carter addresses himself in The Towns of Wales. On the whole, it is a conventional study based upon well-established techniques of geographical description and analysis. It falls into three parts. In the first, the author traces the various phases of town growth in Wales, commencing with 'the pre-urban nuclei', that is, the fortified camps of the. Romans, the monastic settlements of the Celtic missionaries, and the Maerdrefi of the native princes. He then moves on to stress the importance of Norman settlement in the genesis of Welsh urban life, and follows this through with a survey of the major influences upon town development down to the present day (though he treats the impact of industrialism somewhat sketchily). The first part of the book, then- and it is this that will be of greatest interest to the historian-is essentially concerned with the evolution of Welsh towns. Throughout, the author is at pains to point out the close, but variable, relationships between their sites, positions, and functions. In contrast, the second part of the book is devoted to an examination of the functions of Welsh towns, and, more explicitly, to a discussion of the status and nature of these functions. The distribution of activities