404 MILK PRODUCTION IN S.W. SCOTLAND 



Galloway cow. They are polled, and the blue-grey 

 coat represents a pretty equal admixture of black and 

 white hairs. Repeatedly animals of this parentage 

 have carried off the championship at Smithfield, and 

 they are in great repute among north-country graziers. 

 They are mostly raised in Galloway or about the 

 Border, and sold in Carlisle market. But even in the 

 Stewartry we were informed that the black-polls were 

 being displaced by the Ayrshires. Milk-selling is more 

 profitable than stock-raising if the farmer is within half 

 a dozen miles of a railway, and even at greater 

 distances milk can still be made profitable by convert- 

 ing it into cheese. More particularly intensive arable 

 farming can find its outlet in milk, whereas the raising 

 of store cattle cannot readily be speeded up and is 

 most appropriate to comparatively cheap grassland. 

 Hence, as the farming in Scotland has improved, the 

 arable farmer in the better lands along the valleys has 

 sought some business that would turn over his capital 

 more rapidly than cattle-raising, which tends to become 

 confined to the strip of grassland lying just below the 

 pure sheep walks of the uplands. In the neighbour- 

 hood of Kirkcudbright, for example, one sees a sharply 

 undulating country, where the rock is deeply clothed 

 with glacial deposits, often marked by great banks of 

 gravel and sand the kames or eskers that represent 

 ancient moraines. Where the slopes are gentle a light, 

 stony soil prevails well suited to arable cultivation ; 

 and this is divided into good-sized farms of 300 acres 

 or so, mainly under the plough. The land is not rich, 

 nor is it very highly farmed, but the common Scotch 

 six-course rotation is followed, in which two straw 

 crops and a turnip crop are followed by three years of 

 grass, the first being laid up for hay. Very little 

 barley and no wheat are grown, oats being the 



