( 

 .iicreuse. 



( 38 ) 



of a new land. The truth is that under the for- 

 mer system it can hardly be said that the land 

 was cultivated at all. It was simply wasted. The 

 new value is a value both discovered and created, 

 •auses of great It has arisen from the finding out of adaptabilities 

 unknown before, and from management which has 

 turned these adaptabilities to good account. By that 

 management I have been enabled to realise the pro- 

 phecy made by Mr. Maxwell of Aros eighty years ago, 

 that the Island of Tyree was capable of producing 

 returns of which the people then ^^ had no con- 

 ception." The realisation of this estimate has 

 been the combined result of several causes — some of 

 which may be specified : — first, there has been very 

 large outlay by the proprietor in draining, fencing, 

 and building ; secondly, there has been the intro- 

 duction of a new class of tenant brinoinor into the 



o o 



Island a new industry, that of dairy farming ; thirdly, 

 there has been the increased facilities of steam com- 

 munication with the Island — almost comparable with 

 the approach of a new line of railway on the mainland ; 

 fourthly^ there has been the great rise in the value of 

 sheep and cattle, and the newly-discovered adaptation 

 of the Island to the production of superior stock and of 

 early lambs; and last, not least, there has been the 

 substitution of men who prosecute farming as a business 

 for men who simply looked upon a farm as a dignified 

 means of living without the necessity of much skill or 

 the exercise of much activity. Perhaps there has seldom 

 been a case in which we have a more signal illustration 

 of the fundamental value of that old doctrine of the 

 law of Scotland which makes the "Delectus Personse" — 

 the choice of persons, or the right of choice in the 



