Early Agricultural Improvers. 105 



1796, when the lease expired, " the value of the wood 

 which was then paid to his heirs amounted to ,500." 



Mr. Silver of Netherley, an old West India planter, 

 who died in 1791 at the age of eighty-two, trenched 

 and drained 150 Scots acres, some of it at a cost of 

 .50 an acre. He imported lime for manure to the 

 reclaimed land, which for some years, for lack of roads 

 and wheeled vehicles, was brought six miles from 

 Stonehaven "in sacks and creels on horses' backs." 

 Mr. Graham of Morphie, was the first to introduce 

 " broad clover," which he cultivated with success, the 

 result being " a vast acquisition to the night food of 

 the horses, in a country where they had been accus- 

 tomed to be fed with thistles only, from the corn 

 fields, or with the coarsest of aquatic herbage from the 

 different swamps." He cultivated turnips too in drills 

 as early as 1760, and had both very superior cattle 

 and horses ; some of his oxen weighing 80 and even 

 90 stones, while before 1775 he refused .80 for a 

 pair of horses. And the beautiful property of the 

 Burn is described as "an estate that may be almost 

 literally said to have been a creation by the late Lord 

 Adam Gordon," who built "The Burn House" in 

 1791. 



Probably the most remarkable improvers in the 

 Mearns were the Barclays of Ury. Mr. Barclay, who 

 succeeded to the estates in 1760, and who was not 

 indeed the first, any more than he was the last, im- 

 prover of the name, comes chiefly under our notice.* 

 At the time that he succeeded to the estate it consisted 

 largely of marsh and unreclaimed moorland. " The 

 part cultivated was badly laid out in small farms, very 

 insufficiently tilled. The mansion was but scantily 

 sheltered with wood, while there was not a single tree 



* The title of "Father of the Shorthorns" was wont to be 

 applied to the last Barclay of Ury by his brother farmers in the 

 north, who possibly were not aware that their "forbears" had 

 dubbed the previous Barclay " the Father of Farming." 



