34 Notes cmd Sketches. 



sturdy wooden pins. An expert wright could make 

 three ploughs in a day, working diligently ; and he 

 was paid eightpence to a shilling for each. For 

 wood and workmanship, the plough seldom cost above 

 four shillings ; and the iron furnishings did not exceed 

 that amount, so that the total outlay for a completed 

 implement was under ten shillings. 



It was not till the century was pretty well advanced, 

 that iron-tined harrows came to be commonly used. 

 The tines or teeth, as well as the frame work, were of 

 wood : and while oxen were used for the plough, the 

 harrowing was done by horses, as were the carriages 

 needed in connection with the farm. When improv- 

 ing lairds endeavoured to reform the style of the 

 ploughs, and the method of ploughing, they were met 

 by two obstacles. One was " want of experience 

 among country servants in the management of horses ;" 

 the other the fact that the wrights and smiths, in 

 place of adequately imitating the improved ploughs 

 put before them as those of James Small, the father 

 of the swing plough, on the basis of which others 

 have improved so much invariably continued to 

 bring them nearer and nearer to their own defective 

 models. And it was with a view to overcome such 

 obstacles that in some cases, along with Small's 

 ploughs, expert ploughmen were also brought from 

 East Lothian to Aberdeenshire, to set an example in 

 working them. 



The extinction as an operative agency of the old 

 plough, with its team of ten or twelve oxen, was quite 

 gradual. In 1770, it was still in all but universal 

 use ; twenty years thereafter it had to a certain extent 

 given place to a better fashioned implement and a 

 lighter team, the first modifications of the team being 

 to four pairs of oxen and one pair of horses pulling 

 together, the horses being next to the plough ; then to 

 two pairs of horses in a team, and so on. In Cromar, the 

 Garioch, and other districts of Aberdeenshire, the 



