42 Transactions. 



industrious and saving, and were able to begin farming in a 

 small way, and on their own account. From these latter not 

 unfrequently spring the men who rent the largest and best 

 cultivated farms in the district. This also is a feature character- 

 istic of Colvel^d, and which I should gladly see extended to other 

 parishes and districts. 



There is a marked difference between the gradation in farms 

 which obtains in Colvend and other parts of the Stewartry of 

 Kirkcudbright and that which exists in the Lothians, in the 

 lowland parts of Perthshire and Forfarshire, where the pro- 

 prietors are few in number and the farms large. 



Fifty years ago the farms were tenanted by men whose fathers, 

 and whose fathers' fathers had, with infinite labour and no little 

 expense, reclaimed the land, stubbing out the briars and thorns 

 with which the country was at that time covered, trenching the 

 ground which had never known touch of either spade or plough, 

 raising the stones and blasting the boulders with which the 

 country was strewed, building the dykes or stone fences by 

 which the fields were enclosed, by men who continued and 

 improved upon the work which their fathers had begun. Fifty 

 years ago, and for ten or twenty years later, the work of reclama- 

 tion in the parish was still in progress, but with lessened and 

 ever lessening enterprise. I myself was one of the last, and, 

 considering the size of my small holding, the Glebe and the 

 Manse Farm, not one of the least improvers of the land. The 

 Manse Farm I rented. I took out of the ground which 

 I reclaimed I daresay 10,000 cart loads of stones, and of 

 boulders I blasted several hundreds. There was a common 

 saying in the parish at that time — " The land should build 

 the dykes," the meaning of which was that the improvements 

 should repay the outlay ; and, so long as they did so, 

 reclamation of the land continued ; but when, by a rise in rents 

 and the increased cost of labour, the conditions were reversed, 

 the reclamation of land ceased. Such is the state of matters at 

 the present time. If any furtiier reclamation of land takes 

 place it must be by the owners, or, if by tenants, it must be by 

 tenants under exceptionally favourable conditions. 



Fifty years ago farms were tenanted by men whose fore- 

 fathers had been tenants of the same farm for several generations. 

 One family I knew who could trace back their connection with 

 the farm on which they were born for 200 years. They are now 



