440 



AGRICULTURE. 



former period. In the counties of Lanark, Renfrew, Ayr, and 

 Kirkcudbright, the rentals of various estates were greater in 

 1660 than they were seventy years afterwards ; and the causes 

 which brought about a declension in value are ascertained with- 

 out Difficulty. The large fines exacted from country gentlemen 

 and tenants, in these counties, during the reign of Charles II. 

 and his brother James, were almost sufficient to impoverish both 

 proprietors and cultivators, had they even been as wealthy as 

 they are at the present day. In addition to these fines, the 

 dreadful imprisonments, and other oppressive measures pursued 

 by those in power, equally contrary to sound policy and to jus- 

 tice and humanity, desolated large tracts, drove the oppressed 

 gentry and many of their wealthy tenants into foreign coun- 

 tries, and extinguished the spirit of industry and improvement 

 in the breasts of those who were left behind. 



Yet, in the seventeenth century were those laws made which 

 paved the way for the present improved system of agriculture 

 in Scotland. By statute, 1633, landholders were enabled to 

 have their tithes valued, and to buy them either at nine or at 

 six years' purchase, according to the nature of the property. 

 The statute, 1685, conferring on landlords a power to entail 

 their estates, was indeed of a very different tendency as to its 

 effects on agriculture. But the two acts in 1695, for the division 

 of commons, and the separation of intermixed properties, have 

 greatly facilitated the progress of improvement. 



The literary history of agriculture, during the seventeenth 

 century, is of no interest, till about the middle of that period. 

 For more than fifty years after the appearance of Googe's work, 

 there are no systematic works on husbandry, though there are 

 several treatises on particular departments of it. From these it 

 is evident that all the different operations of farming were per- 

 formed with more care and correctness than formerly ; that the 

 fallows were better worked ; the fields kept free of weeds ; and 

 much more attention paid to manures of every kind. Bees 

 seem to have been great favorites with these early writers ; and 

 among others there is a treatise by Butler, a gentleman of Ox- 

 ford, called the " History of Bees," printed in 1609. Markham, 

 Mascall, Gabriel Plattes, Weston, and other authors, belonged 

 to this period. In Sir Richard Weston's discourse on the hus- 



