22 ORMISTOUN^S LETTERS 



I believe Gregory does not design to pay the £\0 for I have 

 sent ten times and they alwise say he is abroad and has left 

 no word. 



VIII 



3 June 1735. Charles, — I have had none from you since my last. We 



have this day a great deal of soft rain, which if with you will 

 do great service to forward both Grass and Corn and may 

 secure many of the weak rooted trees planted last Winter and 

 also make your layM trees strike root if well earthed. 



This I design chiefly for some thoughts about Improving of 

 your father^s Garden and land of which if you do right you 1 

 turn a good deal off into Kitchen and Orchard Garden. In 

 doing of which I still think you might have made more 

 progress last Winter and by so doing you might have made a 

 beginning in drawing in the people to a better taste towards 

 Garden stuff, which tho' you had made no other profit directly, 

 yet that if you had saved yourself only, as to the expence, 

 would have been getting,^ as it would have encreased the 

 demand next year. I can't think the finding of the ground 

 was a full excuse, for tho' the cleaning of much at once might 

 have been expensive, yet I can't think but the cleaning and 

 putting some in order had it only been to introduce what I am 

 sure by good management, you '1 find advantage in afterwards, 

 would have been for your service.^ Indeed if you propose to 

 follow your father's narrow, vastly mistaken notion of raiseing 

 ten Cabbages and not disposing of them tho' in danger of 

 rotting, unless he gets the price of 30 for them, you '1 be in 

 the right, provided nobody will raise cabbages but yourself, 

 but this wont hold long, for the dearer you keep up your price 

 the more others will be encouraged to take up the business, 

 which is the constant consequence of those foolish, narrow, 

 low notions.^ A man in a fortnight or three weeks would have 

 trenched as much as would have made a beginning and would 



1 Profit. 



'•^ Read transposed thus: — 'would have been for your service, you'i find 

 advantage in afterwards. ' 



' Low in sense of commonplace, lowly. Cf. Latin humilis. Note the sound 

 business principles here. 



