30 ORMISTOUN'S LETTERS 



executing, and I really believe much of this proceeds from our 

 low diet both in eating and drinking. Our common food 

 gives little strength to either body or mind and our malt drink 

 is the most stupifying stuff ever was contrived.^ 



Take care the Weeds don't seed among your Pease and 

 Beans, and if you sow Turnips as soon as you get them off, 

 use your Hoe frequently among them ^ for that same reason. 

 From one root of weed you 1 have a plentiful crop if it escapes 

 you. As for the deep running Grasses or Weeds nothing but 

 trenching and Summer or Winter ridging will clear you of 

 them with picking carefully when wrought. Lay every thing 

 into heaps you can draw together of soil kind, it will be useful 

 in time when well cleaned and sweetened by frequent turnings 

 and laying up high, and make all who work with you put to their 

 hand with life. My Bro'" Patrick ^ has sent for the Receipt for 

 Raspberry Rum or Brandy. I fancy he will propagate it. I 

 wish you had been at some trouble in beginning a good planta- 

 tion of them, for I fancy you will find a demand, and if you 

 are provided, Patrick may help you to Customers when he 

 disperses his Receipt. You might have been a year further 

 advanced in a small plantation for a beginning. A Week of 

 a man trenching and cleaning a Spot of Ground, would soon 

 have been repaid, and you might have had some other crop 

 with them upon the ground, and neither have been the worse 

 for other the first year. You know the greatest demand will 

 be for the Red, but you may have some White. They will 

 yield you more than Wheat and after the ground is once made 

 right, and they right planted, they 1 require less Husbandry 

 than a crop of Wheat. You can get Boys and Girls for a 

 trifle to pull them, only a man must pull with them to watch 

 them. You can even get Weeders and Pullers of such things 

 with a little pains, for the half of the expense it costs here. 



1 A sagacious and far-reaching observation. In 1725 the Edinburgh brewers 

 turned out two thousand five hundred barrels of ale a week. 



^ i.e. the peas and beans. To 'sow Turnips broadcast as soon as you get 

 them off,' is an early example of the intensive husbandry practised now only in 

 the Ayrshire early potato districts. The advice which follows is generations in 

 advance of general farming practice. 



^ Patrick, being an advocate in Edinburgh, could give it a vogue. He was 

 admitted 1728. Note that neither wine nor whisky is ever mentioned. 



