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Report Oil Island It is in a paper of a little later date— 1802 — tliat 

 in 1802 by Mr. Yiq^yq by far the most able and detailed account of 



Maxwell of Aros. •/ 



the agriculture of Tyree, and the most vivid picture 

 of the condition to which by over-population and 

 subdivision the inhabitants were then reduced. This 

 Eeport was drawn up by Mr. Maxwell of Aros — a 

 gentleman whose name was widely known in the first 

 quarter of the present century as my grandfather's 

 chamberlain on his estates in Mull and Morvern. It 

 was in his house at Aros that the many distinguished 

 men in literature and in science who came to visit 

 StafFa and lona were hospitably received, and were 

 forwarded on the journey by which alone at that time 

 those Islands could be approached. His name is 

 linked with a distinguished man and a distinguished 

 family of our own time — for Mr. Maxwell became the 

 grandfather of the late Dr. Norman Macleod, through 

 a dauo-liter whose most . beautiful and venerable old 

 aoe of nearly one hundred years came to its close but 

 a very short time ago. Mr. Maxwell's Eeport to my 

 grandfather in 1802 is a model of what may be called 

 the scientific treatment of such a subject. He shows 

 Number of that there were then 319 tenants of crofts so small 



crofters. ^I^.^^ ^^^^ under better management they were 



inadequate to support a family, whilst under the 

 wretched husbandry which actually prevailed, they 

 were, of course, still more incapable of doing so. 

 Crofts inadequate Many of these crofts barely fed two cows, and an 

 to supporD family, extravagant number of horses reduced the grazing of 

 these cows almost to the starvation point. One con- 

 sequence was that the cows did not produce a calf 

 above once in two or three years, so that they afi'orded 

 little profit to the tenants '-'either in the way of milk 



