78 HIGHLAND AND AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Rev. Dr Ure, farming was, in 1794, in a very backward 

 condition. In many places the distinction was kept up 

 between in-field and out-field land. The out-field con- 

 tinued to be kept in tillage for three years, and pastured 

 three years, the farmers defending this system by the 

 ancestral wisdom expressed in the rhyme — 



If land is three years out and three years in, 

 'Twill keep in good heart till the deil grows blin'. 



Several gentlemen had, however, thrown off the fetters of 

 prejudice, and ceased to make distinction between out-field 

 and in-field, sowing Avheat after summer fallow, and intro- 

 ducing sown grasses. Lord Stonefield, about 1774, had 

 offered his tenants a premium of a guinea annually for 

 every acre of potatoes, turnips, or clover Avhich they culti- 

 vated. In a few years he found it unnecessary to continue 

 the premium for potatoes, which had by that time become 

 general ; but the cultivation of the other two articles was 

 not much attended to by the tenants, ' and the premiums 

 for them were never asked.' On the arable lands kept by 

 the Duke of Argyll, however, a system of rotation had 

 been introduced, in which green crops, horse-hoed, were 

 embraced. Mr Ure remarks that the cultivation of 

 turnips in the open field was very inconsiderable, and that 

 ' about 24 acres would contain all the turnip husbandry in 

 the county.' Some of the implements in use were of a very 

 primitive' kind. Mr Ure states that the old Highland 

 spade was still used in Luss and Arroquhar. It was the 

 custom for eight or ten men and women to use these 

 spades in turning over, with one united effort, a furrow or 

 piece of ground, of extent eighteen or twenty feet in 

 length, and eight or ten inches broad. ' In this manner 

 they did more work, in the same space of time, than could 

 be done by nearly double the number of labourers, each 

 Avorking separately.' The Highland harrow, an equally 

 primitive implement, was also in use. It was commonly 

 wrought by a woman, who, ' beginning at the highest point 

 of the ground, went backward, harrowing in the seed as she 

 went down.' Where ploughs Avere in use, it was mainly the 

 common Scotch plough, though in some places the small 



