2 INTRODUCTION. 



enjoys several natural advantages of considerable import- 

 ance. Its maritime situation, and its numerous bays and 

 arms of the sea, together with the lakes and streams with 

 which it is so amply provided, not only tend to promote its 

 commerce, but are also favourable to its agriculture. It is 

 also largely furnished with those essential requisites for im- 

 provement, limestone and marie; and it possesses, in most 

 of its districts, that most important article, fuel, in consider- 

 able quantities. 



2. Owing to the establishment of parochial schools, the 

 farmers of Scotland had, in general, all the advantages of 

 a good education, and having thence acquired a taste for 

 reading, became not only fond of perusing works on agri- 

 culture, but were anxious to avail themselves of any inform- 

 ation they might thus obtain. Hence the culture of artifi- 

 cial grasses, and the best mode of applying them by means 

 of soiling, with various other useful practices, spread rapidly 

 over the whole country. Numbers of Scotch farmers, also, 

 were accustomed to travel, with a view of acquiring useful 

 information, and of comparing their own practices with 

 those of other districts.* 



3. Many of the proprietors of land in Scotland, who 

 were distinguished by the acquisition of useful, rather than 

 of showy accomplishments, took a delight in rural occupa- 

 tions; and, in various districts, now under a complete sys- 

 tem of husbandry, they either improved their estates them- 



* An intelligent farmer once remarked to me, that he derived more 

 advantage, by travelling about to see the improvements of others, than 

 by attempting to make discoveries of his own. Almost every Scotch 

 farmer has travelled through his own county, and some of the neigh- 

 bouring ones ; many have visited England, and some have even pene- 

 trated into Flanders, for the express purpose of obtaining agricultural 

 information. 



