CHAPTEE IV. 



CULTIVATION OF THE SOIL, 1700 1800 ORDINARY 

 MODES OF CROPPING AND THE RESULTS. 



AN English tourist who visited Scotland in 1702, 

 speaks thus of the general aspect of the country at that 

 d a t e : " The surface was generally unenclosed ; oats 

 and barley the chief grain products ; wheat little culti- 

 vated ; little hay made for winter, the horses then feed- 

 ing chiefly on straw and oats." " The people of the 

 Lowlands partly depended on the Highlands for cattle 

 to eat, and the Highlanders, in turn, carried back 

 corn^ of which their own country did not grow a suffi- 

 ciency." 



In even the best cultivated parts of the south of 

 Scotland, " the arable land ran in narrow slips," with 

 " stony wastes between, like the moraines of a glacier." 

 " The scanty manure was conveyed to the field by 

 manual labour ; and the unpleasant scene has often 

 been attested by English travellers, of the crofter's 

 wife carrying the unseemly burden on her back." 

 " The hay meadow was a marsh where rank natural 

 grasses grew, mixed with rushes and other aquatic 

 plants ; and the sour wet ground not only remained 

 undrained, but was deemed peculiarly valuable from 

 the abundance with which it yielded this coarse 

 fodder."* It has been averred that "nine-tenths of 



* The natural meadows of this country may be all comprehended 

 under the denomination of swamps and morasses, of which there 

 are specimens in almost every farm. Formerly these produced 

 the only hay in the country, and they are still, almost exclusively, 

 applied to the same purpose. It was from hay of this kind that 



