24 ON THE AGEICULTURE OF 



heavy mares could be raised in Bute ; the soil is not so well 

 adapted for grazing purposes, and the pasturage is very bare 

 compared with that of the fertile lands of Galloway and Kintyre, 

 and, therefore, so long as the needs of the island are best served 

 by a horse somewhat light of limb, the present breed may be 

 considered the best for all purposes. The farmers find a ready 

 market for their surplus stock, and mares from Bute have been 

 sent all over Britain, and even to the colonies. With the 

 produce of such horses as "Druid" (1120) and "General Neil" 

 (1143) coming up, there should be little danger of the stock 

 being deteriorated. 



*& 



Draming atid Liming, 



The first draining operations of any extent carried on in Bute 

 were commenced more than fifty years ago by Mr Kirkman 

 Finlay, who at that time was proprietor of the lands of St Colmac. 

 The farm of West St Colmac was the first that was drained in Bute 

 on the Deanston principle, and all the deep land on the level 

 fields around Ettrick Bay were reclaimed from a state of un- 

 profitableness. A drain plough was introduced by Mr Finlay, but 

 it proved unworkable on account of the number of boulders 

 buried in the marshes. There is double the extent of arable land 

 in Colmac now that there was forty or fifty years ago, and what 

 was then considered good arable land has been very much im- 

 proved by lime and draining. 



When Mr Samuel Girdwood began reclamation works on the 

 Bute estate he encountered much opposition from the indiffer- 

 ence of the farmers in seconding his efforts to improve the soil. 

 He broke ground on the farms of Cranslagvourarty and Largiv- 

 rechtan, but the tenants of those days were not able to see the 

 force of all his blasting, digging, and draining labours. In their 

 hands the dry patches on the hillsides were cultivated, but where- 

 ever nature asserted her supremacy by the presence of whins and 

 marshes, no efforts were made to battle against her. Whins, rocks, 

 and brushwood were left to the freedom of their own will, and 

 stagnant bogs remained untouched. Mr Girdwood succeeded in 

 convincing the tenants that it was for their advantage to clear 

 the land, and the result in the case of one of them at least was, 

 that when he went out of the farm he went with something very 

 like a fortune. 



About thirty years ago it was customary for the proprietor to 

 pay the tenant who broke new land a premium of £5 per acre, but 

 he gave him no lime. On the farm of Kerrycroy, in Kingarth, 

 upwards of 20 acres of waste land have been reclaimed during 

 the past twenty or twenty-five years, and all the steep land lying 

 along the hillside on the farm of Kilbride, in North Bute, has been 



