INTRODUCTION OF SPECIES AND VARIETIES 5 



bushels per acre having been produced." At what period it may have been first cultivated 

 is not recorded. In the last quarter of the same century, the only other introduction of 

 importance seems to have been the Chiccory or succory* from France, in 1788, by 

 Arthur Young ; for though the further cultivation of the natural grasses was strenuously 

 advocated by many able authors, as Curtis, Lord Kames, Dr Anderson, Martin, and 

 Nodder, in their " Flora Rustica," and Young, as well as by contributors to agricultural 

 periodicals, yet comparatively little attention seems to have been bestowed on testing their 

 actual merits by field culture. 



In Scotland, the cultivation of the artificial grasses was much later of being resorted to 

 than in England. The date of the introduction of Red Clover into Scottish husbandry 

 is not ascertained, but is supposed to have been early in the eighteenth century. In a 

 treatise by the Honourable Society for Improving in the Knowledge of Agriculture, *' pub- 

 lished for the benefit of the farmers of that kingdom," in 1724, it is stated that "the 

 people of this country have of late years begun to follow the practice of sowing grass 

 seeds," of which the writer enumerates the red clover, Rye-grass, and Hop Clover, or 

 Trefoil ; and recommends, with all or any of the above-mentioned grass seeds, " to sow 

 the seeds of good upland or lea hay, particularly the corn grasses, of all kinds ; as also the 

 White Clover, and narrow-leaved plantain " or Rib-grass. Thomas, the sixth Earl of 

 Haddington, and Mr Cockburn of Ormiston, are supposed to have been the first who cul- 

 tivated red clover in East Lothian, and that between 1720 and 1730 ; but even in 1740 

 the practice had made little advancement. Lord Cathcart, one of the most eminent of 

 the early improvers, is believed to have introduced the practice into the western counties, 

 having, in 1733, granted 31 years' leases to his tenants on the baronies of Auchencross 

 and Cathcart, and within the three following years to those in the lands of Craighall, Lay- 

 land, and parish of Maybole, one of the conditions of which was, that they should be 

 " obliged to sow ten pounds of red clover seed, for an experiment, on half an acre of the 

 first break of their crofting which falls to be grass." Red clover is also reported to have 

 been first sown in Forfarshire in 1755, by a farmer in the parish of Logiepert, and in Kin- 

 cardineshire about 1760; but in the northern counties it seems to have been little 

 known, even towards the end of that century. In 1730, Sir William Nicolson, Bart., of 

 Glenbervie, Kincardineshire, by sowing seeds collected promiscuously from natural 

 meadow-hay, among the third or fourth successive crops of oats after lea, was the first in 

 the district of Mearns to make an innovation on the old practice of leaving the land, after 

 being cropped out, to renew its herbage without artificial aid. Sainfoin and Lucern 

 having, at an early period, attracted a good deal of attention among English growers, it 

 was not to have been expected that they should be entirely overlooked even in this less 

 favourable climate. Accordingly, we find, in the Select Transactions of the before-named 

 Society, published in 1743, that the Earl of Stair had, for several preceding years, culti- 

 vated both, at New Listen, in West Lothian, and the same nobleman is further stated to 

 have " made noble examples, both in Lothian and Galloway, in the practice of turnip, 

 cabbage, and carrot husbandry, by the plough." From about the year 1765, the sowing of 

 rye-grass, red, white, and yellow clover, with the occasional addition of rib-grass, seems to 

 have been pretty general in the best cultivated districts of Scotland. In 1773, the red or 

 Creeping-rootedf and Sheep's Fescue grasses were grown by Dr Anderson ; and 

 about the same period, or shortly after, the then proprietor of Glammis Castle, in Forfar- 

 shire, with the view of improving the pasturage about that ancient residence, had the 

 * Cichorium Intybus t Festuca rubra 



