No. 9. 



Scotch Farmivg in the Lothians. 



269 



Scotch, has been at the bottom of the im- 

 proved state of thing's. Education has quick- 

 ened the intellect, and given the knowledge 

 which has enabled them to apply their capi- 

 tal vi'ith success, and to extract from the 

 land-owner the long lease, which enables 

 tliem to invest their capital with safety, as 

 well as success.* 



I may, in concluding, mention a sugges- 

 tion repeatedly made to me, that, instead of 

 sending for Scotch bailiffs, who have many 

 difficulties and prejudices to contend with 

 amongst strangers, the English land-owuer 

 should send intelligent young men to Scot- 

 land, to spend a year or two upon the farms 

 there, and who would, on their return, be 

 better received than a stranger, and have 

 greater facilities for introducing another 

 system. Robert Hyde Greg. 



APPENDIX. 



Thurso, August 23rd, 18-42. 



My Dear Sir, 



The steam engine, I would presume, is of 

 most advantage near towns, because the 

 horses can at all times be employed leading 

 manure ; but even where the whole manure 

 is made upon the farm, I would still have an 

 engine, on 200 to 300 acres arable, unless, 

 indeed, the cost for fuel be very great. Take 

 your case, and suppose that your ploughing, 

 &c., was rather behind, and that a Jld came 

 — that is, fine weather for field work; but 

 just then you had to take off your strength 

 to thrash for the sake of straw for tlie cattle, 

 see how much you would lose by this. An 

 engine may be looked upon as a stud of 

 horses which eat nothing, unless tohen at 

 work. Again, even suppose your horses 

 should be idle for a day or two, occasionally, 

 this is not absolute loss, because they re- 

 fresh, and the work can be all tuken out of 

 tliem when the time comes for it. Gene- 

 rally speaking, the engine is at work, per- 

 haps, once a week, for five or six winter 

 months in the year; it seldom does any work 

 besides thrashing : — crushing grain for feed- 

 ing, you saw attached at Mr. B.'s farm, where 

 we had strawberries and whiskey. 



I think that if a place convenient to the 

 engine was fitted up with apparatus for cut- 

 ting straw, crushing oats, bruising oil cake, 

 slicing turnips, and steaming feed for cattle, 

 and, perhaps, turning a grindstone, that it 

 would save labour and pay, to have the 



steam up, perhaps, three times in the week. 

 The plan of steaming light corn, potatoes, 

 turnips, and chaff, is a great saving, and if 

 the engine was of little power, and the 

 boiler so constructed as to be easily brought 

 to boil, the fire used exclusively for this pur- 

 pose, might be saved. I have written tor 

 the quantity of coal required to thrash out, 

 say 100 quarters of grain, and will write 

 you again on this point. Your objection, in 

 point of taste, to an engine chimney, will, 

 by and bye, perhaps, diminish, especially if 

 the great aristocrats continue to disfigure 

 our finest hills by such horrid monuments, 

 as they have, of late years, been erecting to 

 their relatives. 



As to the comparative value of the gross 

 produce of grass lands, and Lothian cultiva- 

 tion, 1 would suppose you to be about right, 

 in estimating the latter at threefold the 

 former, on good land, such as we saw, fit 

 for wheat; and surely this ought to induce 

 Government to reduce the butter and cheese 

 duties. Yours, 



D. W. 



* On this subject I must content myself witli la- 

 menting the loss of national woalth and happiness, 

 and the compromise of national security, resulting 

 from the impf>rfeft education of all classes in England, 

 both high anil low. 



Remedy for Hollow-horn. — A corres- 

 pondent of the Prairie Farmer says : " For 

 about thirty years, my father kept a dairy of 

 20 to 40 cows, in the city of New York. 

 For the hollow-horn, we always used one to 

 two table-spoonfuls of spirits of turpentine, 

 poured into the hollow on top of the head, 

 between the horns ; and cutting off enough 

 of the end of tlie tail to bleed, which may 

 be done by turning the long hair upwards, 

 and cutting off a quarter of an inch or less. 

 I have known some persons to split the tail, 

 put in salt, and bind it up. All the good 

 effected is by bleeding — therefore the less 

 wound the better. 



" I never knew my father to bore the 

 horns until he had first tried the spirits of 

 turpentine and bleeding. If this failed, he 

 bored the horns on the under side only — 

 never on the top, except when the holes on 

 the under side could not be kept from closing 

 up with matter. 1 have heard him say, he 

 never lost but one cow with the hollow-iiorn, 

 whilst his neighbours who were engaged in 

 the same business, lost many. His rule was, 

 and my practice has been, when a cow was 

 observed with a sunken eye and a dry nose, 

 — which are the sure signs of the hollow- 

 horn, — to put on turpentine and bleed at the 

 tail, and have had unvaried success." 



The last drawn milk of the cow, is al- 

 ways the richest in cream — hence the ne- 

 cessity of a careful and confidential milker. 



