Cultivation of the Soil. 23 



outfield tillage, says, after the land had grown the 

 sixth grain crop in succession, " it was seldom before 

 the fourth year that it got a green surface." The 

 minister of Birse speaks of some portions of the 

 ground having been cropped continuously, with an 

 occasional dunging, without having been allowed " any 

 rest for a century." The minister of a Buchan parish 

 says : " A rotation of crops is not yet established in 

 this district. While the heritor only plows where he 

 cannot get grass to grow any longer, the tenant some- 

 times plows as long as corn of any kind will grow." 

 Another minister, who had made some inquiry on the 

 subject, got this statement from one farmer " On my 

 farm there was a field of four acres which, for twenty- 

 five years during my residence there, yielded alternately 

 full crops of grain, viz., beans, peas, and oats, without 

 any manure. I have reason to think my predecessor 

 for five or seven years employed it in the same 

 manner." This rare field always grew a conspicuously 

 rich crop however ; but " another farmer candidly told 

 me," says the writer, " that from twelve bolls of oats 

 which he sowed last crop, there was only produced 

 twenty bolls ; and of crop 1793 he had not three returns." 

 Samples of fields which had grown ten, fifteen, or 

 twenty grain crops in succession with little or no 

 manuring were not confined to a single district, nor 

 to a single county ; for we hear of them in Banff and 

 Kincardineshires, as well as in Aberdeenshire, toward 

 the close of the century. It was in the first named 

 county, and in the parish of Alvah, that fields to which 

 lime had been applied, were reckoned fit to yield from 

 twelve to nineteen crops of oats in succession. And it 

 was to Kincardineshire the old school farmer belonged, 

 who, on being complimented on the good appearance of 

 his crop, said " It's nae marvel, for it's only the auch- 

 teent crap sin' it gat gweedin' (dunging)." In some 

 of the old leases, it was formally stipulated that " there 

 shall not be more thanjfae crops of oats in succession." 



