Anniversary Address. 425 



though invincible obstructions to good culture. It would 

 puzzle one, at first view, to explain why such strips of 

 land are left unfilled. They must have been reserved 

 originally as a receptacle for stones thrown off the tilled 

 land : and husbandmen were led by imitation to leave 

 such strips even where there were few or no stones." 

 " Shallow plowing is universal, without the least regard 

 to deepness of soil. Ribbing is a general practice, though 

 the slightest reflection is sufficient to make it evident 

 that to leave half of the land unfilled, must be wretched 

 husbandry. Summer fallow has of late years crept in, 

 and is now common in three or four counties. In the 

 rest of Scotland, for want of summer fallow, there is a 

 continual struggle for superiority between corn and 

 weeds." Lord Kaimes goes on to notice the farmer's 

 neglect in harrowing and rolling the land ; his great 

 ignorance with regard to rotation of crops ; his very little 

 skill in harvest- work ; how no branch of husbandry is 

 less understood than manure ; the neglect to increase the 

 cultivation of potatoes, which he describes as being 

 almost wholly propagated in lazy-beds, while " expert 

 farmers, not many in number, raise them with the plough 

 at the twentieth part of the expense ; " how swine are 

 very little attended to in Scotland, remarking " they are 

 fed at a small expense, and yet make most nourishing 

 food. Every person who has a cow ought also to have 

 a pig. This is universal in England : it is creeping into 

 Berwickshire, but in few other places as far as I know."- 

 Such, we must take it, was the condition of Scotch 

 husbandry in 1770. How do we find it fifty years later, 

 or about the period when this Club was instituted ? Let 

 the highest authority we can quote, Sir John Sinclair 

 himself, tell us. He writes in his standard work which I 

 have already mentioned, under the heading " General 

 view of the Improved Husbandry of Scotland :" — " The 

 foundation of improved agriculture is certainly laid in 

 the best cultivated districts in Scotland, in as great 

 perfection as it possibly can be in any country. The 



