30 RETORT OF THE AGRICULTURE OF AYRSHIRE. 



bound to go regularly over their whole lands {outfield and infield) 

 with tillage crops and grass alternately, and to sow a fixed 

 quantity of seeds with the last corn crop. The three years under 

 tillage might be oats, beans, or bere, intermixed in whatever way 

 suited the tenant's interest and his laud best, — a crop of hay 

 being taken from the seeds, and afterwards resting in grass from 

 five to eight years, according to circumstances, — so much slaked 

 lime, or so many cubic yards of dung, being spread over the 

 sward ere agaiu lifting. Some time after, however, many began 

 to see that three successive corn crops were too impoverishing, 

 and consequently restricted themselves to two years under tillage, 

 one year's hay, and usually not more than five or six years in 

 pasture. This system of rotation yet prevails widely on all the 

 heavier lands throughout Kyle and Cunningham. 



Prom a " survey of Cunningham" made in 1819, the whole 

 extent that year under turnips in Cunningham was only 358 

 statute acres, being at the rate of four acres of turnips to every 

 300 acres under tillage ; so that in Cunningham, at least, and 

 Kyle may be included, turnip-culture had not then made more 

 than a beginning — although, in the Carrick district, doubtless, 

 a greater proportional extent would be grown in 1819 from the 

 larger areas of suitable land therein. Taking the county, there are 

 presently grown about seventeen acres of turnips, as against 

 every ninety-five acres under other tillage crops. But potatoes 

 were cultivated as a field crop in Ayrshire, on a wider scale and 

 at an earlier date (since 1729), than in most other parts of 

 Scotland. The extent under potatoes in Cunningham in 1819 

 was 2,852 statute acres, and we safely estimate that Kyle and 

 Carrick would have, at least, an equal amount each, so that the 

 total acreage in Ayrshire in 1819 was fully as much as now. 

 The agricultural statistics of 1856-57 making the average of these 

 two years as 7,800 acres ; and there has been an increase under 

 early potatoes since 1857. At least two-thirds of the acreage 

 grown in those days were known as town potatoes, planted on 

 farms in near neighbourhood to towns and large weaving vil- 

 lages, and being the result of a mutual contract between the 

 farmers and poorer classes of inhabitants. The reporter can re- 

 collect in his youthful days of the wide extent of potatoes thus 

 planted in -Ayrshire, and the custom was a most remunerative 

 one to both . parties concerned. Their cultivation may be said 

 to have reached its height between 1835 and 1845, and at its 

 maximum must have been considerably more than double that 

 of 1819. But nearly all this was done away with after the 

 almost total destruction of the potato-crops in 1845-46, and the 

 large majority of inland farmers now only grow about half-an-acre 

 or so for home consumption ; although of late years, the areas 

 under potatoes even in the inland districts have been rather ex- 



