1856. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



361 



For the New England Farmer. 



KURAL ECONOMY OF THE BRITISH 

 ISLES-No. 15. 



SCOTLAND. 



If there is any country which might rebuke and 

 banish the feeling of despair which exists respect- 

 ing New England agriculture, it is Scotland. 

 Whatever question might be raised respecting the 

 soil of New England, as compared to that of Eng- 

 land, none can be raised, as respects natural fertili- 

 ty, when it is compared with that of Scotland. 



Within the last century, Scotland was one of the 

 poorest and most barbarous countries in Europe. 

 Its progress in agriculture is so recent, that it can 

 be traced, and its progress seen, which cannot be 

 done in England, where sunk capital has accumu- 

 lated so long. No country owes so much as Scot- 

 land to the power of man over nature, except per- 

 haps Holland. Switzerland certainly does not pre 

 sent such obstacles to human industry. The total 

 production of the country has increased in the last 

 century, tenfold and the agricultural products in 

 an enormous ratio. Scotch agriculture is, at this 

 day, ill some districts at least, superior to English 

 In no country, is farming better regulated. It is 

 to the model forms of Scotland, that people send 

 their sons to be taught farming. 



Scotland and its adjacent islands contain a total 

 of nineteen million acres, nearly three-fourths of 

 which are absolutely unfit for cultivation ; especial- 

 ly the Highlands and islands of the north. There 

 are perhaps five million acres of arable land, in 

 Scotland, of which two millions at least are in 

 meadow and artificial pasture. The Highlands are 

 the country for oats, and grow scarcely any other 

 grain. In the Lowlands, the four year course is 

 generally followed. The products of the soil, vege- 

 table and animal, are about $40 in value to each 

 inhabitant, in this respect equalling England. Yet 

 but little more than a century ago, famine and pe- 

 riodical scarcity devastated this country. 



How comes it that Scotland has so rapidly at- 

 tained this high production, in spite of the natural 

 nfertility of her soil and climate ? The answer un 

 doubtedlyis, that it is owing to the employment of 

 capital and skill j though you would be told in 

 Scotland, that it was owing to the fact, that the 

 land is held in large properties, there being but 

 7,800 proprietors in all Scotland. But though 

 large property prevails in Scotland, the farms are 

 not large, hardly middle sized. I cannot help 

 thinking that if the farmers owned the farms, and 

 used the same capital and skill as now, the results 

 would be as great, or greater than now. 



The Lowlands yield nine-tenths of the produce 

 of Scotland. Let us enter the undulating country 

 which surrounds Edinburgh, called the Lothians, 

 containing about 1,200,000 acres. Farming here, 

 is certainly not to be equalled. Rents of $7,50, 

 $15 and $25 the acre are not uncommon, the av- 

 erage about $5,00 ; and the farmer makes nearly 

 as much profit as the jjroprietor. The meadows in 

 the neighborhood of Edinburgh are irrigated with 

 the sewerage of the town, and are cut six or eight 

 times during the season. Some of them let as high 

 as $150 and $200 per annum, the acre. 



A great part of the wheat produced in Scot- 

 land is grown in the Loihians, which are now fa- 

 mous for cereal crops. Yet this soil was at one 



time reckoned incapable of bearing even rye ; only 

 barley and oats were cultivated. It is mentioned 

 that in 1727 a field of wheat of about eight acres, 

 near Edinburgh, was the object of universal curios- 

 ity. Now one-fifth of the Lothians, about 250,000 

 acres, is in wheat, and in good seasons, this crop 

 yields from 30 to 45 bushels the acre. Here, 

 again, it is the Norfolk rotation more or less mod- 

 ified, according to local circumstances, which pro- 

 duces this large return. Why should it not do so 

 in New England ? Turnip cultivation, the basis of 

 the rotation, is no where better understood than in 

 the Lothians. A complete system of drainage has 

 existed for a long time past. Every farm, or near- 

 ly so, has its steam engine. Stabulation of cattle 

 has been long in common practice. In the county 

 of Haddington alone, which contains not quite 

 200,000 acres, in 1853, one hundred and eighty-five 

 steam engines, of six horse power each, were em- 

 ployed for agricultural purposes, besides 81 water 

 mills. 



See what the system of farming was in former 

 times, in the Lothians, and other parts of Scotland. 

 The lands of a farm used to be divided into M'hat 

 were called in-field and out-field. The out-field 

 portion remained quite in a state of nature, and 

 was used as pasture ; the in-field, on the contrary, 

 produced barley and oats, uninteruptedly in succes- 

 sion. A worse system can scarcely be imagined. 

 Fallows are an improvement on this barbarous 

 practice. The starting point in Scotland, from 

 which improvement began, was, certainly, low 

 enough to encourage New England. 



Now enter Ayrshire, for I do not mean to give 

 a minute account of all Scotland, but only such an 

 account as will show the New England farmer 

 what Scotland was, and what it now is. "Fifty to 

 sixty years ago, there was scarcely a road which 

 was passable in the whole country," says a local 

 writer. "Everywhere the cottages were built of 

 mud, and thatched with straw, the fire in the cen- 

 ter, with an opening in the roof, to serve as a chim- 

 ney, and surrounded with a dunghill, while the 

 land was covered with all sorts of weeds. The on- 

 ly vegetable cultivated, consisted of a few Scotch 

 cabbages, which, with milk and oat-meal, formed 

 all the food of the population. Successive crops of 

 oats were taken off" the same field, as long as it con- 

 tinued to produce anything beyond the seed sown, 

 after which it remained sterile, until it was fit for 

 producing another miserable crop. The cattle 

 were famished in winter, and when spring arrived, 

 could scarcely rise without assistance. There was 

 not a farmer with money sufficient to improve this 

 state of things, and proprietors had not the means, 

 either." Can so disheartening a description be 

 given of any part of New England ? 



Ayrshire now ranks among the most flourishing 

 districts of Great Britain. The increasing demand 

 for dairy produce has created the fine breed of 

 Ayrshire cows, and has changed those ancient 

 heaths into profitable pastures. 



The further we go north, richness decreases, but 

 draining, the cultivation of turnips and forage crops, 

 extra manures, subsoil plowing, and liming, every- 

 where convert frightful mosses and barren rocks into 

 good lands. One might almost call it a second crea- 

 tion. Every day, this part of Scotland is increasing 

 its production of milk and meat. Oats and barley fol- 

 low the movement ; and wheat dares to show itself 

 in the gloomy, cold county of Caiihness, where at 



