On 30 Dec, 21:54, Roland Perry wrote:
In message
, at
11:38:43 on Wed, 30 Dec 2009, MIG
remarked:

any county is an administrative concept and its borders are
administrative and can't be anything else.

No, they can be geographic, ignoring recent administrative changes.

What is a geographic boundary of a county, unless the county is an
island or something?

Even if a geographic feature, such as a river, is chosen as the
boundary, it's still an administrative boundary. *The concept of the
county doesn't come frome the river. *The concept of administration
requires boundaries and the river may be chosen.

If you take the earlier example of Reading; historically north of the
river was Oxon and south of the river was Berks. More recently (fsvo) it
was decided to transfer a chunk of the town north of the river
administratively into Berks, but geographically and psychologically it's
still north of the river.

Geographically north of the river indeed. Rivers are geographical. I
have no problem with that.