ARRAN. ANTIQUITIES. 317 



immediate example of a neighbouring commercial and 

 highly improved country. A new system has however 

 been recently introduced, by the extension of farms and 

 the introduction of opulent and intelligent tenants from 

 other districts; and a few years will probably therefore 

 see Arran rise, like Isla, to an equality with the most 

 improved of the surrounding country. The facility of 

 communication with the commercial towns of the Clyde, 

 which has recently been given by the introduction of 

 steam boats, will doubtless also tend shortly to produce 

 here that impulse which it has already given even to 

 the most remote shores of this complicated estuary; 

 and it is to be expected that the natural beauties of 

 Brodick will in no long time render it, like Rothsay 

 and Largs, the summer resort of the opulent inhabitants 

 of this populous and wealthy countiy. 



Extensive coppices of natural wood are found in 

 different parts of the island, and, in almost every place, 

 shelter is afforded to wood, such as to enable it to 

 acquire a luxuriant growth. Profit, no less than orna- 

 ment, would result from the extension of planting; but 

 the non-residence of the .proprietors is here, as elsewhere, 

 the obstacle to those improvements which might, in the 

 course of no long time, render Arran one of the most 

 picturesque and engaging tracts throughout Scotland. 



ARRAN, like most of the Western islands, possesses 

 many specimens of those antiquities which, though little 

 interesting when individually considered, serve, as in 

 other situations, for records of the tribes that erected 

 them, and present almost the only historical traces of 

 the early inhabitants of this country. When the 

 alterations of language resulting from time, foreign ad- 

 mixture, migration, or conquest, have destroyed the 

 chief proofs of the connexions and descent of rude 

 nations; the peculiarities of their worship, of their 



