Early Agricultural Improvers. 103 



as 3,000,000 trees in a single enclosure. James 

 Farquharson of Invercauld, in the years from 1750 to 

 1806, is said to have planted 16,000,000 firs and 

 2,000,000 larches on his property in Braemar, through 

 which he constructed more than twenty miles of roads. 

 Toward the close of the eighteenth century, the culti- 

 vation of timber trees seems to have become an object 

 of very general attention, as testified by the statement 

 (in 1794) of the writer just cited, that "there is scarcely 

 a private gentleman in Aberdeenshire who owns an 

 estate of 500 or 600 'a year who has not planted 

 many hundred thousand trees." 



The Earl of Findlater, who, for several years before 

 his death in 1776, resided constantly at Cullen House, 

 was the first to attempt improvements in agriculture 

 and manufactures in Banffshire. He brought an over- 

 seer from England, and cultivated a farm near Banff 

 in a way then quite new to the district. He introduced 

 turnip husbandry, and granted long leases to his ten- 

 ants on condition that they should enclose the lands 

 within a certain period, sow grass seeds, and adopt 

 summer fallowing, to a certain extent, within the first 

 five years of their final occupancy. As early as 1752 

 he established a bleachfield at Deskford -, and at a later 

 period a manufactory of linen and damask cloth at 

 Cullen, both of which enterprises fell into decay when 

 household spinning ceased. 



Mr. George Eobertson, in his General View of the 

 Agriculture of Kincardineshire (1807) states that about 

 the year 1760 " there arose in this county a constel- 

 lation of cultivators, which dispelling the mist that till 

 then obscured the horizon of agricultural science, threw 

 out all at once such a splendid light over the labours 

 of husbandry as has not been exceeded, and perhaps 

 hardly equalled even, to the present day." The detailed 

 statements given by Mr. Eobertson bear out his elo- 

 quent figure very well. And one phase of the new move- 

 ment here too seems to have been " a strong bias for 



