180 REPORT ON THE AGKICULTUEE OF PERTHSHIRE. 



crops for many bears back, it may be said that the improvement 

 is not in the same ratio as it has been on the lighter lands of the 

 county, and while the rent of the latter has increased, on the 

 clays it has stood still or declined. And, if it is admitted that 

 such is the case, it may be asked, Who or what is to blame for it? 

 Is it the management of the present possessors, or is it that of 

 their predecessors, or is it the result of unfavourable seasons, or 

 low prices consequent on the free importation of corn, by which 

 the resources of the tenants for maintaining their land in condi- 

 tion are crippled ? The true answer to the query would be, that 

 it is not attributable to any one or two of these causes, but to 

 every one of them, and perhaps in pretty equal proportions. It 

 has been shown that the land has been subjected to heavy grain 

 cropping, both by the present tenants and their predecessors, and 

 that no adequate means have been taken in the management and 

 application of the so-called restorative crops to effect the object 

 for which they were intended. 



Twenty years ago there was a general impression that the 

 fertility and productiveness of Carse land was yielding to the 

 treatment it was receiving, and from the idea that this should be 

 remedied by a modification of the proportion of grain grown, 

 the seven-shift was changed into a six-shift, by preventing the 

 tenants from taking wheat and then barley before grass. At the 

 time this was generally supposed by proprietors to be an im- 

 provement; but, with all submission, it may be fairly doubted. 

 It would not pay to lose the wheat crop and sow out with barley ; 

 so that the result was, that the wheat was kept and the grass was 

 sown in it in spring, instead of with barley, at great disadvantage, 

 after the wheat had been six months in the ground and the 

 surface battered by the winter rains. Every farmer knows that 

 the nearer to the dung the better will the grass be ; and under 

 the old seven-shift, as the barley and grass seeds were always 

 dunged, the exhaustion by the grain crop was counteracted, 

 while the chances of a good crop of grass and clover were in- 

 creased, both from that cause, and in consequence of the grass 

 seeds being sown in spring-wrought land, instead of a bed scratched 

 for them in the battered surface occupied by wheat. 



It is needless to enlarge on the other two causes of the present 

 depression of agriculture in the Carse, as they are much in the 

 minds of all concerned with it ; and, doubtless, they will be more 

 readily and cordially admitted than the others to which allusion 

 has been made. The season of 1862 was so unmistakably ruin- 

 ous, that much of the present distress and necessities of Carse 

 farmers, for years to come, may be ascribed to its operation. 



So standing the case, what is to be done to mend it ? Any 

 one can see at a glance that of the two branches of agricultural 

 husbandry, viz., grain-growing and rearing and keeping of stock, 



