47f) 



FARMERS' REGISTER 



[No. 8 



and the tenants drew anriple profits during these 

 leases. Some part of it was lately set, ibr nine 

 years, hy auction, at from 2Z. to 3/. per acre. 

 I'he whole now set at 21. 10s. per acre, on an 

 average. Here the rental has been raised, hy the 

 industry of tenants, without a penny haviho- het\n 

 advanced hy the propnetors, ii-oiri 2s. 6d. to 500Z. 

 per annum, or 4000 per cent — a profit to the pro^ 

 prielor alone, that iar exceeds even the golden 

 dreams of commerce. The profit, to the occu- 

 piers atiil the public, has been slill greater. Some 

 j)ait of the crop on Straihaven moss, sold, in the 

 year 1800, at upwards ol' 30/. per acre. 



Mr. Moody, on 17.^ acres of Paisley moss, of 

 many teet in depth, and which (till he beijan to 

 improve it) w.is not won h si.xpence per acre of 

 rent, nearly one acre of which is occupied with 

 roads and ditches, has, in the course of si.x crops, 

 viz. from ISOl to 180G, with about nine acres 

 which were in crop in ISOO, raised various species 

 of grain, roots, and arasses, which have brouiiht 

 him upwards of 1800Z. sterling. James Baird 

 now pays, during a lease, 41. 4s. per acre for part 

 of that moss; on three roods of which he grazed 

 in summer ISOG, a large milk cow, and cut 30 

 stones of hay from under her leet. Mr. Bell was, 

 Bome years aijo, otlijred 41. 4s. per acre, dnriiig a 

 lease, Ibr that part of the moss which he has re- 

 claimed; but he would not set it under 4/. 10s. per 



The crops niised by Mr. Lauder, on the mosses 

 near Rednock House, in Monteath, which is a 

 wing of Moss-Flanders, (so termed from the vul- 

 gar opinion that it floated over the sea fi'oni Flan- 

 ders.) and about twenty feet in depth, have, for 

 the fiist crop, with no other manure than a mode- 

 rate dressing of hot lime, yielded always fl-om 

 five to ten boils; and subseque'tit crops from twelve 

 to flfieen bolls, and oHen mOre, per acre. 



Sonte of tlie ftiosses on the estate of Grougpr, 

 Ayrshire, have yielded, in oats, potatoes, hay, 

 and pasture, equal to tlie best land on that fine 

 barony. The pasture on the cultivated ino?;? at 

 Duntroon, was, when I surveyed it, in August, 

 1808, equal in value to the best I saw in the coun- 

 ty of Argyle. A piece of Locher-moss, near 

 Dumfries, reclaimed by Nicol Shaw, esq. fias 

 yielded as valuable crops, anil was, when I last 

 eurveyed it, in 1809, as fine pasture as any in that 

 neighborhood. 



r could have mentioned many other inst.tnces of 

 successful moss culture, in other parts of Scotland 

 that I have surveyed, solely with a view of pro- 

 curing information as to that species of irnjirove- 

 nient.* But as the accbunts of them have been 

 laid before the public in my last publication on 

 moss, those here p'iven, may serve as a sample; 

 referrinijto that publication, those who wish for 

 I'urther details. And as I have already drawn 



• Those made by the Rigjht Honorable Baronet at 

 the head of the Board of Aj^riculture, on the skirts of 

 the Ord of Caithness, several himiireds of feet above 

 the level of the sea, and almost inaccessible to ma- 

 nure, where the native inhabitants are indolent, and 

 much prejudiced a!i;ainst wiiat tliey term innovations 

 in agriculture, oui;ht to be held up as a pattern to 

 other proprietors. If every species of waste, of the 

 same value, and equally unpropitlous to the cultivator, 

 were improved to the sam^ degree, tiie food of man, 

 from that circumstance alone, would be doubled, or 

 tripled, in Scotland, 



this paper to too great a size for your ptiblication, 

 I shall conclude, with merely mentioning one in- 

 stance of successfiil cultivation in England. 



The iiriprovemenls at Casile-head, those of the 

 Bishop oI'Llandhlf, and some by Jolin Sutton, esq. 

 of Materdale, on Uls water, have been remarkably 

 well, and successfulfy ctinducted. But as the first 

 of these has been detailed by the Rio-hl Honora- 

 ble Baronet at the head of the Board of Agricul- 

 ture, in the 5th volume of the 'Communications 

 to the Board,' and it and the others are also de- 

 scribed in my last publication, I need not detail 

 them here. 



Traffbrd moss, near Manchester, was rented from 

 the proprietor, by William Roscoe and Thomas 

 Wakefield, esqs., on a lease Ibr ninety-nine years, 

 fand of which about fifteen or twenty years only 

 are yet run), at one shilling per acre per annum; 

 and by the twelfth year, or so, of the lease, that 

 part which belonged to Mr. Roscoe was set to a 

 tenant, at 41. 4s. per English acre, per annum, 

 for the first seven, and at 51. per acre for the re- 

 maining thirteen years of the lease. 



Mr. Roscoe, thoiiixh he owned to me that he 

 and Mr. Wakefield bad run inio many blunders 

 in their operations on Traflord mos.s, has notwith- 

 standing, taken a lease, Ibr ninety-nine years of 

 Chait-moss, of between two and three thousand 

 acres in e.xtent, at Is. per acre; and when I tra- 

 versed it with him, in May, 1808, he had about 

 one hundred men and many horses at work, drain- 

 ing, ploughiuij-, delving, manuring, &c. This 

 may serve to show the idea entertained by that 

 worthy and enlightened gentleman, as to the pro- 

 priety of moss culture, and, the profits it yields. 

 When he first entered on that species of improve- 

 ment, he ma}' fairly be supposed to have been a 

 mere theorist. But afier he had cultivated several 

 hundred acres of moss, and run into many errors in 

 the execution of that improvement, he siill Ibund 

 it to be not only practicable, but profitable; and 

 he seeks out for a new job — takes no less than 

 between two and three tlioiisand acres — and en- 

 ters, with redoubled assiduity, on its improvement. 

 He cannot now- be tertned a visionary theorist, but 

 an intelligent and experienced itnprover. 



If a gentleman, bred to a literary and laborious 

 profession, who has made such a respectable figure 

 as a historian and a politician, and raised himself, 

 by his own industry, to the first eminence in the 

 literary world, and in societj' — a stranger to agri- 

 culture, and iiviny; at forty miles distance from the 

 place where liis improvements are carried on — can 

 reclaim, to advantaire, several thousand acres of 

 the deepest and worst moss in England, and turn 

 it into a source of gain to himsell^ — a fortune to 

 his family for nearly the present century — and re- 

 turn it to the Trafibrd family, at the end of the 

 lease, worth 20,000Z. per annum more than when 

 they granted the lease — what might not be effiicl- 

 ed by many proprietors of that species of soil, in 

 all the counties of Scotland, and their tenants, 

 who have acquired, Irom experience, more exten- 

 sive and correct knowlodire of agriculture, and 

 have mosses less forbidding, mixed in small patch- 

 es, with their cultivated lands, with abundance of 

 manure, and every other means of improvement 

 within their reach? Under circumstances so fiivor- 

 able. .many of these mosses nnght be reclaimed at 

 much less expense, and with a greater certainty of 

 profit, than Mr. Roscoe could expect. The con- 



