318 A SKETCH OF THE BOTANY OF 



pears to have rapidly retrograded. The shelter of the woods, 

 which each passing year tended to lessen, enabled our ancestors 

 to raise corn in places and at an elevation where it cannot attain 

 maturity without that shelter ; nor could their successors wholly 

 counterbalance this loss by ploughing out the lower grounds, for 

 as the forests died away, the marshes enlarged their bounds, and 

 the practice of draining was unknown. Nor, independent of na- 

 tural causes, could the state of agriculture be otherwise than bad 

 in a district subject to continual inroads and devastations, and the 

 inhabitants of which were themselves fond of predatory warfare. 

 From the interesting survey of Sir R. BOWES and Sir R. ELLE- 

 KER in 1542, it appears, however, that the Scotch border was, 

 upon the whole, better cultivated than the immediately adjacent 

 parts of England ; for they tell us that the Scotch were in the 

 custom of driving their cattle out of their own lands, " to be con- 

 tynually and daily pastured and fedde wythin the grounde of 

 England," and for this good reason, " they have plowed and sowen 

 all the grounde within their towneshipes that will bear any corne, 

 and pastures and fedes all theyr cattail and shepe in greatt num- 

 bers wythin their grounde of England, to their greatt profytte 

 and advantage." But more than a century after this, the condi- 

 tion of Berwickshire was wretched when compared with the 

 peaceful counties of the south at the same period. For the cor- 

 rectness of this statement, we have no less authority than that of 

 the celebrated JOHN RAY, who visited Berwick in August 1661. 

 No sooner has he entered Scotland than we find him remarking 

 that the Scots " have neither good bread, cheese, or drink. They 

 cannot make them, nor will they learn. Their butter is very in- 

 different, 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, and sometimes broth of decorticated barley. The ordi- 

 nary 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. In the 

 most stately and fashionable houses in great towns, instead of 

 ceiling they cover the chambers with fir boards, nailed on the 

 roof within side." " The ground in the valleys and plains bears 

 good corn, but especially bear-barley or bigge, and oats, but rare- 

 ly wheat and rye. We observed little or no fallow ground in 

 Scotland ; some layed ground we saw, which they manured with 



