NOTES AND SKETCHES, 



ILLUSTRATIVE OF 



NOETHEEN EUEAL LIFE IN THE 

 EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY. 



INTRODUCTORY GENERAL STAGNATION OF AGRICULTURE 



DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURT. 



IN the annals of Scottish agriculture, and specially of 

 agriculture as it concerned that limited district in the 

 north-eastern part of Scotland to which the jottings 

 that follow will be chiefly confined, the eighteenth 

 century was, throughout almost its whole course, a 

 period of remarkable stagnation. It opened inaus- 

 piciously, in so far as the close of the preceding century 

 had been marked by a series of very ungenial seasons, 

 which brought with them disastrously deficient harvests, 

 and want of food, amounting in many parts to absolute 

 famine. The method of tillage, too, had seen no im- 

 provement from time immemorial ; and as a natural 

 consequence of this, the land, even in ordinary seasons, 

 had in many cases come to yield not more, but less than 

 it had yielded in the time that had gone before. The 

 system pursued was one of exhaustion, and the cultivated 

 part of the soil was to a large extent getting quite worn 

 out. The native cattle were small, ill-grown animals ; 

 and they were correspondingly ill fed. 



The spirit of enterprise was not yet abroad. For the 



first thirty years of the century, that is from 1700 to 



1730, "the medium price of lands sold in the county 



of Aberdeen did not," we are told, " exceed sixteen 



2 



