( 40 ) 



In particular, the great rise in the value of cattle, and 

 very often of potatoes, they have had the full advan- 

 tage of. The increased facilities afforded by steam com- 

 munication have been of equal or even greater value 

 to them in proportion as they have told on the prices 

 of pigs, eggs, poultry, and fish. The breeding and sale 

 of horses have also been a great source of profit — very 

 little considered in the rent. Yet it will be found on 

 Kise of rental of comparing the present rental of farms which are still 

 small crofts com- divided into small crofts, with the rental of the same 



2>aratively small. 



farms as it stood thirty years ago, that the rise 



of rental has been comparatively small — in some cases 

 quite trifling, and has borne no proportion whatever 

 to the rise in the real lettinor value of the land as 

 tested by the rent readily obtained for larger fiirms 

 in the open market, — that is to say, when esti- 

 mated according to the capabilities of the soil by men 

 with adequate capital who know how to turn these 

 capabilities to full account. The truth is that, if we 

 go back to a still earlier date, such as the years at the 

 beginning of the present century, there has been on 

 some of the farms divided into crofts not an increase 

 but a positive decrease of rent. This has no doubt 

 arisen from the fact that at that time there was some 

 mingling of kelp-rental with agricultural rental, and 

 that when the kelp failed there was some readjustment 

 of rents which were not purely agricultural. The 

 only considerable rise in crofter-rental since 1847 has 

 been on the laro;er consolidated crofts, and on the small 

 farms erected out of them. It is needless to say that 

 consolidated crofts are always worth a great deal more 

 than the mere sum of their rents when separate. 

 They can be more economically worked, and there is 



