BUTE AND ARKAN. 1 



9 



to facilitate interchange of of^inions by practical men on agricul- 

 tural questions, Mr Girdwood, in conjunction with Mr Alexander 

 Anderson, the first letterpress printer in Eothesay, issued, on the 

 26th November 1839, the first number of the " Bute Eecord of 

 Kural Affairs," a publication which continued to be issued 

 regularly until January 1846, and which in its republished form 

 (1860) furnishes an excellent reference work to the student of 

 agricultural progress in Bute. 



Having thus brought the review of the agriculture of Bute 

 prior to the period on which we are asked to report to a close, we 

 now proceed to give somewhat in detail particulars of farming 

 operations during the past twenty-five or thirty years. 



The system of farming differs little if at all from that commonly 

 pursued in the west of Scotland. The rotation of crops at, and 

 some time previous to the commencement of the period reported 

 on, was what is known as a seven years' shift, i.e., the ground lay 

 three years in pasture, and four under crop, but for the last twenty 

 years or more a six years' shift was substituted ; in all the new 

 leases, however, the seven years' shift has again been reverted to. 

 The land lies under pasture for three years ; it is then broken 

 up by the plough, and the fourth year an oat crop is sown ; the 

 fifth year it is green cropped ; the sixth year it is sown down 

 with oats or barley and rye-grass and clover seed; and the seventh 

 year a crop of rye-grass and clover is taken off. No two white 

 crops are allowed to be taken off in succession without the con- 

 sent of the landlord. 



Taking these crops in the order of their rotation we are first 

 called upon to give a few particulars of the 



Oat Croj). 



The established custom for the last fifty years has been to import 

 for seed purposes Midlothian " potato " and " sandy " oats from 

 the Edinburgh markets. On the higher lands, where the ground 

 is shallow, and of a heavy clayey nature, " sandy " oats are 

 invariably sown, and on the deeper and more fertile lands scarcely 

 any but " potato " oats are produced. " Hamilton " oats are 

 found to grow admiral^ly on the light soils of Kilchattan Bay, 

 and weigh about 42 lbs. per bushel. The land is broken out of 

 grass during January and February, and sowing is begun in 

 April, and thought to l)e completed in good time when the seed 

 is all in by the 20tli of that month. In the north-east of Bute 

 damage is often done to the growing crop during the month of 

 June by gales of east wind, which shake the gi'ain when in 

 fiower, and although the bulk of straw is often very great, tlie 

 result of thrashing is many times disappointing. Tlie crops are 

 generally first harvested in North Bute, — not that the soil there 



