REPORT ON THE AGRICULTURE OF PERTHSHIRE. 175 



married men were employed, who were not housed in the farmers' 

 dwelling as in other more primitive districts, but in a separate 

 cottage, too often a sad hovel, where they lived and cooked for 

 themselves in a way that is now better known by the discussions 

 which have taken place on the subject. These have had a good 

 effect in increasing the disposition to employ married men, and 

 to improve the bothies by separate accommodation, and many 

 comforts which neither masters nor men seemed to have con- 

 sidered necessary. The bothy men used to be worse lodged than 

 any animal on the farm, but there has been of late a very general 

 improvement in this respect. 



Some of the farmers of the lighter lands in Perthshire who are 

 thriving by stock keeping, try to supplement the want of extent 

 in their farms by taking grass parks in the neighbourhood, and 

 it would appear that the increase and improvement of the pasture 

 on their own farms have by no means diminished their desire to 

 have them. If they have sheep, they graze them at home, and 

 take parks to summer their young cattle ; and the more they be- 

 come stock farmers, the greater becomes the desire to have that 

 which will keep it. The demand for grass parks is consequently 

 great in proportion to the extent at present existing, and the 

 rents are consequently high. Good grass parks fetch a higher 

 rent than the land could bear under an agricultural lease. But 

 except at Balgowan, where there are about 600 acres annually 

 let at a rental approaching L.2000, there has been no great addi- 

 tion to the extent of grass parks in the county for a length of 

 time. Where proprietors have land suitable for grass parks, 

 there is no more profitable application of it, for the expense of 

 building and repairing steadings is saved ; and it would be a 

 great boon to the tenantry of the county if good grass could be 

 got at somewhat easier rates, which an extension of the acreage 

 under grass might possibly but not certainly lead to. 



Having thus fully considered the history and present state of 

 agriculture in the light lands of Perthshire, the next branch of 

 the subject that claims attention is that of — 



3. The Heavy or Carse Lands. 



These lie chiefly in the Carse of Gowrie, situated on the north 

 bank of the Tay between Perth and Dundee, and in the lower 

 part of Strathearn above and below the Bridge of Earn ; they 

 consist of deposits of alluvial clay of comparatively recent forma- 

 tion, occupying naturally the lowest and flattest parts of the dis- 

 tricts named, and throughout the Carse of Gowrie they are 

 interspersed by slightly elevated mounds or ridges of an older 

 formation, consisting of dark brown clay-loams of greater fertility, 

 locally called "black land," and which formed islands or " inches" 

 in the flat muddy waste that extended from Kinnoull Hill to 



