g6 HIGHLAND AND AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



which a report had been recently furnished by Mr Demp- 

 ster. These estates comprised 18,000 acres of land, on 

 which were living about 200 families. The farms were of 

 small extent, producing only some corn and potatoes, 

 hardly sufficient to maintain the families of the tenants, 

 who paid their rents by the sale of cattle, which were fed 

 in their houses on straw through the winter, and picked up 

 a miserable subsistence on the waste and common ground 

 of the estates during the summer. The Sutherland estate 

 comprised 1755 square miles. On the southern district of 

 the property, the arable land was generally a kindly soil, 

 and the people were fairly prosperous. In the middle 

 district, black cattle, hill horses, sheep, and goats were the 

 staple products. In the northern district, for the most 

 part, the modes of culture were of the same character as 

 they had been for 200 years. In many places in the 

 district the plough was not used at all. ' The ground in- 

 tended for corn was turned over either with the spade or 

 with the foot plough, called the cascroim.' There were 

 various breeds of cattle in the county. Several kinds had 

 been tried at Dunrobin, including the Galloway, the Bake- 

 well, the Fife, and the Isle of Skye. On the whole, it had 

 been found that the native stock, with judicious crossing 

 and attention to shape, seemed to answer best. The cattle 

 in the district of Assynt were reckoned superior, though 

 the mode of wintering was peculiar, almost all the cattle in 

 the district being housed ' under the same roof with their 

 masters, where they enjoyed the fire and the smoke in 

 common with the family.' At Dunrobin, the Cheviot 

 breed of sheep had been tried, and was found to answer re- 

 markably well. On the estate of Strathy, a farm of con- 

 siderable extent, called Armidale, had lately been appro- 

 priated to an important experiment, to ascertain whether 

 Cheviot sheep would thrive there, and, so far as the experi- 

 ment had gone at the date of the report, it had been satis- 

 factory. 



Treating of the county of Caithness, in which his 

 own estate was situated. Sir John Sinclair says that the 



