BUTE AND AERAX. • 29 



north end of the island is now wrought on a regular rotation of 

 crops. Pladda, lying a short distance off the Kildonan shore on 

 the south end, is cultivated by the lighthouse keepers, and grows- 

 the usual trarden and field seeds. 



O' 



General Bevieiu of the Agriculture of Arran. 



To report on the state of agriculture in Arran during the past 

 thirty or forty years is a matter of considerable difficulty. There 

 has been progress made, and tliere has been stagnation. The 

 larger farmers have done much to improve their holdings, some 

 of the smaller farmers have done a little,l3ut manv of them have 

 done nothing. Little or no encouragement to improve land is given 

 by the superior ; game is preserved to an inordinate extent, and 

 the smaller tenantry, especially in Whiting Bay and Lochranza 

 districts, combine the occupations of fishermen and farmers, 

 and depend more on the letting of their houses to summer 

 visitors than on the produce of the soil. When Dr M'Xaughton 

 wrote his " Statistical Account of the Parish of Kilbride," in 

 1840, he says : " In dairy-farming and the art of cultivation the 

 smaller farmers have yet much to learn. They put little lime 

 on their lands, neglect the cleaning and protection of their 

 thorn fences, evade the rotation of crops laid down for them, 

 when they can, and are not sufficiently alive to the advantages 

 of green crops and sown grasses. Hence their fodder is scarce 

 in winter, and their pasture defective in summer ; their cattle a 

 stinted breed, unproductive either for the dairy or the butcher." 



These remarks have still considerable force. The smaller 

 tenants do not attend sufficiently to the proper cultivation of 

 their farms ; many of them have cars which they hire in summer 

 to the visitors, and occasionally they hang about the pierheads for 

 hours in hope of securing hires, when they might be busily engaged 

 working their plots of ground. Many of the farms are very 

 small and would not support a family. When Dr M'iSraughton 

 wrote, tliere were in Kilbride parish, which forms the eastern half 

 of the island, 208 farms of unequal size ; 161 of these were let at 

 rents less than £20 per annum each, oO were let at rents exceed- 

 ing £20 and under £40, the rents of 11 of them were more than 

 £40 and less than £100, and only 6 tenants paid over £100 of 

 rent each. Although in 1880 the number of these small farms 

 is considerably less than it was in 1840, yet from King's Cross 

 to ])ipj)in, along th(; comparatively level land facing the south- 

 east, there are still 52 tenants who will rank as farmers. Going 

 round the south end of the island from Dii)pin the farms become 

 somewhat larger, and several of them are of more than average 

 size ; but at Sliddery again, on the south-west side, there is 

 another batch of small farms similar to those at "Whiting Day. 



