On Agricultural Improvements in Roxburgh, 159 



was divided into five brakes or patches, the rotation as 

 follows : wheat, peas, barley, oats, fallow. The wheat 

 and the barley were always well dunged ; and this was 

 accounted a highly improved rotation. — Sometimes 

 oats instead of peas were sown after wheat. Wheat- 

 land- oats, as they were termed, were reckoned good 

 seed for the out-field ; seed oats for the in- field were 

 generally purchased from a distant farm, famed for 

 good oats. By far the greatest proportion of the farm 

 was out-field ; of this, a patch of unequal dimensions, 

 (being a portion of the oldest pasture ground) was 

 broken up every year, and sown with oats ; again 

 ploughed in the fall, and left all winter to be pulveri- 

 sed by the frost, and in the following March, the oats 

 were sown without any more ploughing. This course 

 was pursued for three years successively, and then the 

 land was left to rest, for an indefinite number of years, 

 without any grass-seeds of any kind sown upon it. 



Upon those farms where sheep walks w^re a prin- 

 cipal object, little grain was sown in the out-field, and 

 such was the sagacity of the shepherds' dogs, that they 

 would lead the sheep to feed close to the very edge of 

 the growing grain, without touching a stalk of it, and 

 at night the sheep were confined in a pen or fold. 

 These folds, when ploughed out, produced very strong* 

 crops of oats, for three years sussessively. 



All the land, whether in-field or out-field, was 

 formed into high ridges, the middle of which was 

 raised to the height of perhaps a foot, to a foot 

 and a half, or in some instances two feet, above the 

 level of the furrows between : these had remained in 

 the same form from time immemorial, and were all 



