42 Transactions. 
industrious and saving, and were able to begin farming in a 
small way, and on their own account. From these latter not 
unfrequently spring the men who rent the largest and best 
cultivated farms in the district. This also is a feature character- 
istic of Colvend, and which I should gladly see extended to other 
parishes and districts. 
There is a marked difference between the gradation in farms 
which obtains in Colvend and other parts of the Stewartry of 
Kirkcudbright and that which exists in the Lothians, in the 
lowland parts of Perthshire and Forfarshire, where the pro- 
prietors are few in number and the farms large. 
Fifty years ago the farms were tenanted by men whose fathers, 
and whose fathers’ fathers had, with infinite labour and no little 
expense, reclaimed the land, stubbing out the briars and thorns 
with which the country was at that time covered, trenching the 
ground which had never known touch of either spade or plough, 
raising the stones and blasting the boulders with which the 
country was strewed, building the dykes or stone fences by 
which the fields were enclosed, by men who continued and 
improved upon the work which their fathers had begun. Fifty 
years ago, and for ten or twenty years later, the work of reclama- 
tion in the parish was still in progress, but with lessened and 
ever lesseniig enterprise. JI myself was one of the last, and, 
considering the size of my small holding, the Glebe and the 
Manse Farm, not one of the least improvers of the land. The 
Manse Farm I rented. I took out of the ground which 
I reclaimed I daresay 10,000 cart loads of stones, and of 
boulders I blasted several hundreds. There was a common 
saying in the parish at that time—‘ The land should build 
the dykes,” the meaning of which was that the improvements 
should repay the outlay; and, so long as they did so, 
reclamation of the land continued ; but when, by a rise in rents 
and the increased cost of labour, the conditions were reversed, 
the reclamation of land ceased. Such is the state of matters at 
the present time. If any further reclamation of land takes 
place it must be by the owners, or, if by tenants, it must be by 
tenants under exceptionally favourable conditions. 
Fifty years ago farms were tenanted by men whose fore- 
fathers had been tenants of the same farm for several generations. 
One family I knew who could trace back their connection with 
the farm on which they were born for 200 years. They are now 
