282 REPORT ON THE AGRICULTURE OF DUMFRIESSHIRE. 



the mode of culture pursued in the county. Some of them — as 

 the Duke of Buccleuch, Mr Hope Johnstone, Mr Carruthers of 

 Dormont, and Mr Jardine of Castlemilk — have home farms, on 

 which stock of the finest breeds are reared, and the most approved 

 systems of farming pursued. They thus compete with their 

 tenants in rearing the same kind of stock, and in raising the 

 same kind of crops ; and have not unfrequently at show dinners 

 to do honour to their own tenants as their successful rivals. 

 Altogether, Dumfriesshire may congratulate itself on the posses- 

 sion of a class of landowners second to none in any other county 

 for considerateness and enlightened liberality. 



The general body of the tenant farmers in Dumfriesshire are 

 intelligent and enterprising. They have all received at least as 

 good an education as the parish schools can supply; and the 

 parish schools of this county would bear a favourable comparison 

 with those in any other part of Scotland for the substantial 

 character of the education which they afford. Others have been 

 principally educated in academies and other public seminaries, 

 while a few have received the advantages of a university 

 education. From what we say in a subsequent section, it will 

 be understood that there is much diversity in the general 

 intelligence, refinement, and pecuniary means of the farmers of 

 Dumfriesshire. The sheep-farmers are very generally men of 

 education and capital ; and they would bear a favourable com- 

 parison with men of their class in any other county. But the 

 arable farms are so different in extent that they are occupied by 

 men of every grade ; there is, in fact, as much diversity in the 

 farmers as there is in the size and quality of the farms which 

 they cultivate. 



However, the advancement in agriculture which a district or 

 county makes is more largely dependent upon the few than upon 

 the many. When the pioneers of progress have made a decided 

 step in advance, the others, perceiving the pecuniary advantage 

 to be derived from it, — for no change is an improvement in farm- 

 ing unless it yields a larger return, — sooner or later follow in their 

 wake. It has been so in all the great improvements which have 

 been wrought in the agriculture of Dumfriesshire ; as, for ex- 

 ample, in draining, liming, and in the application of artificial 

 manures ; and in the nature of things it must always be so. 

 There are many names " familiar as household words" throughout 

 the county, because of the leading part which their bearers have 

 taken in all agricultural matters, and we could easily quote them 

 here, but there are so many deserving commendation, that the 

 list could not be curtailed within reasonable limits without 

 omitting several which ought not to be passed over ; we think it 

 better, therefore, to speak of the tenant farmers in these general 

 terms, without mentioning the names of individuals. 



