TENANT-FARMERS. 27 



After receiving what is commonly called a liberal education at the Parochial and 

 Grammar Schools of Dundee, at the Academy there, under Mr Duncan, the Rector, 

 now Professor of Mathematics in St Salvador's College, St Andrews, and at the College 

 of Edinburgh, I boarded myself with Mr George Brown, of Whitsome Hill, a farm 

 in Berwickshire of about 600 acres, with the view of learning agriculture. Mr 

 Brown was universally esteemed one of the best farmers of that well-farmed county ; 

 and so high an opinion did the late Mr Robertson of Ladykirk, the most celebrated 

 breeder of shorthorns in Scotland of his day, entertain of his farming, both in 

 stock and crop, that he gave him permission to send his cows to the bulls at Lady- 

 kirk a singular favour, which he extended, I believe, to no one else, with the 

 exception of his old tenant and intimate friend, Mr Heriot of Fellowhills. I 

 remained three years at Whitsome Hill, during the first two of which I laboured 

 with my own hands at every species of work which the ploughman, the field- 

 worker, and the shepherd must perform in the field, or the steward and the 

 cattleman at the steading : and even in, the dairy and poultry-house part of my 

 time was spent. All this labour I undertook, not of necessity, but voluntarily 

 and with cheerfulness, in the determination of acquiring a thoroughly practical 

 knowledge of my profession. In my third year, when there happened to be no 

 steward, Mr Brown permitted me to manage the farm under his own immediate 

 superintendence. 



I then travelled for nearly a twelvemonth, soon after peace was restored, 

 through most of the countries of Europe, and in many places I happened to be 

 the first Briton who had visited them since the outbreak of the Revolutionary 

 War. This excursion gave me considerable insight into the methods of Continental 

 farming. 



Shortly after my return home, I took possession of a small farm on Balmadies 

 in Forfarshire, consisting of 300 acres. It was in such a state of dilapidation 

 as to present an excellent subject for improvement. It had no farmhouse only 

 the remains of a steading ; the fields were nine-and-twenty in number, very irregu- 

 lar in shape, and fenced with broken-down stone dykes and clumsy layers of 

 boulders and turf ; a rivulet every year inundated parts of the best land ; the farm- 

 roads were in a wretched condition ; and above forty acres of waste land were covered 

 with whins and broom. The heaviest description of soil was hazel loam, some of 

 it deep, some shallow, and all resting on retentive clay ; and the lightest kind was 

 gravelly, resting on gravel. The farm contained a remarkable feature, not un- 

 common, however, in that part of the country an isolated peat-bog, very deep, 

 containing thick beds of shell-marl, and enclosing a small lake, around whose margin 

 grew aquatic plants in the utmost luxuriance. In a few years the farm possessed a 

 mansion-house, offices, and steading ; the surface was laid off in twelve fields of equal 

 size and rectangular shape, to suit the six-course shift with three years' grass ; some of 

 those fields were fenced with thorn hedges, and some with stone dykes ; the impetuous 

 rivulet, the Vinny, was embanked out ; the land upon the retentive bottom was 

 drained in the old mode with stones, but a few acres were tried with furrow-drains 

 filled with small stones, several years before the Deanston plan was made public by 

 the late lamented James Smith ; after the draining, the soil was trench-ploughed 

 with four horses ; the farm-roads were extended and made serviceable, and all the 

 waste land was brought into cultivation. I made the plans of the buildings myself, 

 and also set off the form of the fields, and the lines of the fences and roads not 

 because I imagined that a professional man could not have done them better, but 

 that my mind and hands might be familiarised with every variety of labour apper- 



