REPORT ON THE AGRICULTURE OF PERTHSHIRE. 177 



ing or improving the condition of the land. If the farmer got 

 his straw well wet, it mattered not much to him whether that 

 end was attained by rain from heaven or cattle urine. There was 

 a show of effecting the object by the latter process, for a score or 

 two of cattle were bought at some of the autumn trysts and kept 

 on Bridewell fare — straw and water — all winter, and their tem- 

 porary proprietor was well satisfied, on parting company with 

 them in spring, if he had a pound a-head from the transaction. 

 He was all that sum to the good, besides the aid they had given 

 to the rainfall, in wetting his straw to a condition that entitled 

 it to be called dung. On a purely clay farm in those days, before 

 tile-draining came into vogue, there was no attempt at growing 

 turnips ; and feeding the unfortunate scarecrows of the strawyard 

 with oil-cake, hashed grain, or any modern food now daily given 

 by ordinary farmers, was never thought of. All that went back 

 to the land was straw and water ; a part of the straw having been 

 eaten and passed through the animals as dung, and the rest of 

 the straw watered with urine of animals fed on straw and water 

 alone, and perhaps in some measure benefited by its connection 

 with their interiors, but it could not contain any ingredients be- 

 yond those supplied by the articles it was produced from. It 

 speaks volumes for the natural fertility of the Carse clay, that it 

 maintained a certain degree of productiveness against such mer- 

 ciless exhaustion from generation to generation ; for sure enough, 

 there are few soils that could stand it Ions without beino- reduced to 

 absolute sterility. This exhaustion, however, arose not from the 

 frequent repetition of grain crops, but from the total absence of 

 any sufficient means to sustain the land under them ; for the 

 intermediate crops intended to be restorative were not worthy of 

 the name, according to the conditions under which they were 

 grown and the purposes to which they were applied. To the 

 four grain crops in the old rotation — oats, wheat after beans, 

 wheat after fallow, and barley after the wheat, sown with grass 

 seeds — there is no objection, provided the barley after wheat is 

 well dunged. Turning to the alternate restorative crops, first, 

 beans, if well manured and drilled, they also cannot be objected 

 to for clay land — they are a crop that is thoroughly ripened on the 

 ground, the seed or grain being carried off the farm and sold, but 

 the straw or haulm is consumed on the farm. In those days, 

 however, beans were sown broadcast, and therefore little could be 

 done in the way of cleaning them ; and if clung was applied, 

 which was not the practice, its enriching qualities were but 

 slender. Beans, therefore, whether as regarded the field from 

 which the crop was taken, or the farm generally, were far from 

 having a restorative effect. The next alternate restorative was 

 the fallow. In those days fallow was believed to be, and seems 

 to have been, the keystone of the whole rotation. There can be 



M 



