64 HIGHLAND AND AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Great attention was bestowed on the breed of horses and 

 cattle. Ploughmen and dairy people were brought from 

 various parts of England. Mr Fairlie of Fairly also led 

 the way in improvements in the county, introducing leases 

 for eighteen years and enforcing rotation of cropping. 

 Still, even at the date of the survey. Colonel Fullarton has 

 to report that ' there are not yet above a score of common 

 farmers in the county who are in the practice of raising 

 turnips.' Potatoes were a universally established crop. 

 Multures or servitudes to particular mills, though in general 

 abolished, still existed in some parts of the county. ' The 

 more ordinary farmers still continued the old Scotch 

 plough.' Lime was the staple manure of the county. As 

 to liv^e stock, ' the adage in the district of unknown an- 

 tiquity — ' 



Kyle for man,* 



Carrick for coo; 



Cunningham for butter and cheese, 



And Galloway for woo'. 



very correctly described the features of the three divisions 

 of Ayrshire ; Carrick, lying to the south, being distin- 

 guished for fine cattle, chiefly of the Galloway breed ; 

 while Kyle, the central, and Cunningham, the northern 

 district, were remarkable for dairy farming, the stock con- 

 sisting mostly of the kind long known as the Ayrshire 

 breed. Speaking of these latter, the Colonel says — ' They 

 had long been denominated the Dunlop breed, either from 

 the ancient family of that name or the parish where they 

 were first brought to perfection, and where still (1793), con- 

 tinues a greater attention to milk cows and dairies than in 

 any other part of Scotland.'-}* Colonel Fullarton states that 



* ' There was a lad was bom in Kyle, ' — Bums. 



t The Rev. Thomas Brisbane, in his Report, dated 1973, on the Parish 

 of Dunlop, says — 'The practice of making sweet milk cheese, as it is called, 

 was first introduced into this parish by one Barbara Gilmour, whose grandson is 

 still (1793), living, and is proprietor of the same farm. Having gone to Ire- 

 land, to avoid the hardships which people were then exposed to on account of 

 religion, she is said to have brought it with her when she returned about the 

 time of the Revolution. Since that period, cheese has been the great and 

 almost the only business of Dunlop.' But Mr Alton of Strathaven, in his 

 Report on the County in 181 2, observes of this statement respecting Barbara 



