INTRODUCTION xxv 



a garden,' a thing which only a laird then attempted. There 

 follow useful hints not only for the farmer but for his good- 

 wife. ' A garden will supply all sorts of roots and herbs. A 

 neck of mutton in the broth with these and some slices of 

 bread — all well boiled on a slow fire till very tender — forms a 

 good cheap dish. A pound or two of beef will make it better. 

 Instead of bread you may put in barley and half a handful of 

 meal to thicken it.' 



Before 1727, when the Bell Letters begin, the Wight corre- 

 spondence in the Farmer's Magazine shows that Alexander had 

 enclosed a garden, sowed rye-grass and clover, and grasses with 

 wheat, feeding cattle and sheep on the grass. Cockburn writes 

 to him — 18th August 1725 — from Tottenham, ' Your turnips 

 ought to have been hoed ere this ' (in drills, therefore, and not 

 broadcast), and proceeds to give directions as to the hoeing, 

 the laying out of the garden. Again, in December 1726, ' the 

 profit from the one fourth acre potatoes upon the bad land 

 opposite the church is so great, that I hope you will go on 

 with them, especially as you find good crops of corn [barley] 

 after them.' These dates for enclosing sown grasses, clover, 

 drilled turnips and potatoes are in advance of what are usually 

 given. Robertson, in his Rural RecoUedioiis, which dated 

 from 1765, sets down the introduction of red clover from 

 seed and of rye-grass to Thomas, sixth Earl of Haddington 

 (d. 1735), and this on a very limited scale. 



Equally novel was the work of Cockburn and Wight in 

 enclosing by hedges of earth and quicksets planted atop, fre- 

 quently discussed in the Letters. An excellent treatise on 

 WaT^s and Means for Inclosing, ascribed to Macintosh of 

 Borlum, was published by Freebairn in 1729 ; but the author 

 had no means of giving effect to his instructions. With 

 Cockburn these hedges were made to combine the useful and 

 the ornamental, for he set them thick with white and black 

 thorn, brambles, roses and honeysuckles, elder and privet, 

 producing a most pleasing effect. Following, too, the example 



