160 JETHRO TULL AND LORD TOWNSHEND 



to those of England, and their methods of raising crops had remained 

 unchanged since the Battle of Bannockburn. Advocates of en- 

 closure in England might legitimately argue that the rapid progress 

 of Scottish farming dates from the General Enclosure Act for 

 Scotland which was passed in 1695. The south-eastern counties 

 were the first to be improved. Forty years before (1661), John 

 Ray 1 had painted an unfavourable picture of the condition of the 

 inhabitants. " The men seem to be very lazy, and may be 

 frequently observed to plow in their cloaks. . . . They have 

 neither good bread, cheese, or drink. They cannot make them, nor 

 will they learn. Their butter is very indifferent, and one would 

 wonder how they could contrive to make it so bad. They use 

 much pottage made of coal-wort, which they call keal, sometimes 

 broth of decorticated barley. The ordinary country houses are 

 pitiful cots, built of stone, and covered with turves, having in them 

 but one room, many of them no chimneys, the windows very small 

 holes, and not glazed." Alexander Garden of Troup describes the 

 farming system which was followed in 1686. The land was divided 

 into in-field and out-field. The in-field was kept " constantly 

 under come and bear, the husbandmen dunging it every thrie years, 

 and, for his pains, if he reap the fourth corne, he is satisfied." The 

 out-field was allowed to grow green with weeds and thistles, and, 

 after four or five years of this repose, was twice ploughed and sown 

 with corn. Three crops were taken in succession ; then, when the 

 soil was too exhausted to repay seed and labour, it reverted to its 

 weeds and thistles. Sir Archibald Grant, 2 of Monymusk in Aber- 

 deenshire, says that in 1716 turnips grown in fields by the Earl of 

 Rothes and a few others were objects of wonder to the neighbour- 

 hood, that, except in East Lothian, no wheat was grown, that on 

 his own estate there were no enclosures, no metalled roads, and no 

 wheel-carriages. On the family property, when his father allowed 

 him to undertake the management " there was not one acre 

 inclosed, nor any timber upon it, but a few elm, cycamore, and ash 

 about a small kitchen garden adjoining to the house, and some 

 stragling trees at some of the farm-yards, with a small cops- 

 wood, not inclosed, and dwarfish, and broused by sheep and 

 cattle. All the farmes ill disposed, and mixed ; different persons 

 having alternate ridges ; not one wheel-carriage on the esteat, nor 



1 Select Remains of John Ray, London, 1760. 



Miscellany of the Spalding Club, Aberdeen, 1841-2, vol. ii. p. 96 etc. 



