176 



FARMERS' REGISTER, 



[No. 3 



cept to one or two counties; the process and im- 

 plements were alike wretched: great numbers of 

 cattle perished every spring; the occupiers were 

 in extreme poverty: and famines were every now 

 and then occurring, that sometime laid waste ex- 

 tensive districts. At the beginning of last centu- 

 ry, and for long after, lands, even in tbe Loihians. 

 were uniformly divided into infield and outfield. 

 The whole manure made on the fiirm was laid on 

 the former, whicli was i)loughed and cropped 

 without intermission, so long, atr least, as it would 

 bear any thing. Neither turnips, clover, nor potatoes 

 had been so much as heard of] but corn followed 

 corn in an unbroken series. In the Countryman^ s 

 i?i/rf(?;ie;!ts, written by Lord Belhaven, and publish- 

 in 1723, we are told that the infield of East Lothian, 

 where wheat is sown, is generally divided by the 

 tenant into lour divisions, or breaks, as they call 

 them, viz. one of wheat, one of barley, one of peas, 

 and one of oats; so that the wheat is sown after the 

 peas, the barley after the wheat, and the oats after 

 the barley. Here we have a rotation with three 

 consecutive corn crops, and a crop of peas once 

 every tour years. As might be expected, the re- 

 turns were about three tunes the seed. It is of im- 

 portance, too, to observe, that this triflmg re- 

 turn, was obtained at a great comparative expense. 

 At this period, and for about half a century after, 

 there was no instance in Scotland of a plough 

 being drawn by fewer than tour horses. Most 

 commonly it was wrought either by six horses, or 

 by four horses and two oxen; and in some of the 

 most backward districts, a still greater number of 

 animals, sometimes as many as ten or twelve, 

 were yoked to it. This was ascribable partly 

 to the awkward and clumsy form of the imple- 

 ment itself; partly to the weakness of the cattle, 

 their diminutive size, and the improper maimer 

 in which they were yoked; and principally per- 

 haps, to the ignorance of the cultivators. On the 

 whole, however, the work was at once very ex- 

 pensive and very ill performed; the ridges were 

 crooked and twisted, and so much heaped up in 

 the middle, that a great deal of land in the hol- 

 lows between them was lost to any useful pur- 

 pose.* 



About the middle of the century we begin to 

 find symptoms of amendment. In Maxwells 

 Practical Husbandry, published in 1756, an im- 

 proved system is laid down and inculcated. He 

 pronounces it to be bad husbandry to take two con- 

 secutive corn crops; and he informs us, that the 

 best farmers in East Lothian after fiillow take a 

 crop of wheat, after the wheat, peas, then barley, 

 and alter that oats. This is still very bad; though 

 a material improvement on the practice described 

 by Lord Belhaven. It shows, too, that down to 

 1757, neither turnips, potatoes, nor any sort of 

 cultivated herbage, formed any part of the system 

 even of the best farmers in East Lothian. The 

 famous Lord Stair is said to have been the first 

 who introduced the turnip culture into Scotland; 

 havinir raised turnips on his estate of NewListon, 

 near Edinhurirh, al)out the midille of last century. 

 But Mr. William Dawson, tenant of Erogden, in 

 Roxburghshire, has an un(iuestionable titTe to be 

 considered as the real hither of the improved 

 Scottish husbandry. Being a farmer, and cultiva- 

 ting for profir only, his example had infinitely 



more influence over his neighbors than it would 

 have had, had he been a landlord. He com- 

 menced raising turnips at Frogden, in 1759. They 

 were at first sown broad-casr, but he set about 

 drilling on a large scale in 1763, and his success 

 stimulated others to adopt the same system. Mr. 

 Dawson was also the first who introduced, not 

 long after 1760, the practice of ploughing wilh two 

 horses abreast without a driver; nor is it easy to 

 exaggerate the obligations the agriculture of 

 Scotland owes to his sayacity and enterprise.* But 

 even in the Lothians, the four-horse plough contin- 

 ued in general use till about 1780; and it was not fi- 

 nally superseded by the two-horse plough for sev- 

 eral years after. In the other parts of the coun- 

 try the former kept its footing still longer than in 

 the Lothians. Nothins}; contributed more to pave 

 the way for this important revolution in the meth- 

 od of ploughing, than the signal improvements 

 made upon the construction of the plough by 

 Small about 1770. 



From the close of the American war, the pro- 

 gress of improvement in Scotland has been rapid 

 beyond all previous examjjle. This has been 

 owing to a variety of causes; but principally to 

 the extraordinary progress made in commerce and 

 manufactures, since that period. In the distracted 

 state in which Scodand was formerly placed, there 

 could be no considerable progress; but, after the 

 battle of Culloden had extinjjuished the hopes of 

 the Jacobites, and the abolition of hereditm-y ju- 

 risdictions had paved the way for the introduction 

 of a regular system of government, a spirit of" in- 

 dustry and enterprise began to be diffused on all 

 sides. A good many branches of trade and man- 

 ufacture carried on in England were introduced 

 into Scotland soon after the peace of 1763; and 

 not a few of them were prosecuted with much 

 success. Their progress was checked lor a while 

 by the American war; but after the treaty of Pa- 

 ris, in 1783, they acquired more than their former 

 vigor: others were introduced, and all of them 

 haA^e since continued, with few, and those but 

 transient interruptions, to advance with a rapidity 

 that could not previously have been supposed pos- 

 sible. 



This unprecedented extension of manufacturing 

 and commercial industry, occasioned a correspond- 

 ing increase of wealth and population, particularly 

 in towns and villages. Improved accommoda- 

 tions of all sorts began to be in universal demand; 

 and, besides the greater cjuanlity of the inft-rior 

 sorts of food required to supply the increasinjj pop- 

 ulation, a novel, or at least a vastly increased mar- 

 ket was opened for wheat and butcher meat. 

 These circumstances had the most astonishing in- 

 fluence over agriculture. The new, and constantly 

 increasing markets, establishctl at their very doors, 

 stimulated the farmers to put forth all their ener- 

 gies, and to avail themselves of discoveries and 

 practices to which they had hitherto been total 

 strangers. !n a few years the fiice of the country 

 was completely changed; and its productive capa- 

 cities increased in a deuxec that the most sanguine 

 projector of any jirevious period could not have 

 conceived possible. 



The following statement of the comparative 

 weight of the |)roducc annually aflbrded under 

 the system of farming followed in East Lothian, 



* Rural Recollections, p. 196. 



* Survey of Roxburgh, pp. 69 and 90. 



