108 EECLAMATION OF WASTE LAND. 



cesses of improvement. As long as the potato remained 

 sound, the experiment prospered ; but now that money 

 wages must be paid, it does not succeed. 



The success of the system was thus totally based on 

 the potato ; and the scheme seems rather to have been 

 intended to show how many people could be kept alive 

 by the cultivation of waste lands, than to exhibit an 

 example of an improvement in the condition of the 

 people resulting from the reclamation of land. Better 

 far that this tract should be left to the undisturbed pos- 

 session of the curlew and the solitary raven, than that 

 it should be made the means of perpetuating a system 

 which only thrives through the misery of the people. 



The failure of an experiment may be as instructive 

 as its success. At this moment, if the fee-simple of the 

 model farm, with the stock and crop on it, were sold, they 

 would not repay the capital sunk in the undertaking, 

 while it is acknowledged that, without con-acre labour, 

 the returns will not pay the expenses. The experiment 

 at King Williamstown may therefore serve as a beacon 

 to warn others against any similar attempt. 



It does not follow, however, that these waste lands 

 are irreclaimable. Lying four hundred miles farther 

 south than the sheep farms of Sutherland and Caith- 

 ness, whence come the finest Cheviot wethers of the 

 great Inverness sheep fair, they have the advantage of 

 a much milder climate. Surface drains, for the improve- 

 ment of the land as sheep pasture, might be cheaply 

 executed, and lime, for top-dressing it, obtained on the 

 spot. There are now excellent roads of access, and the 

 whole district lies within twenty miles of the line of 



