58 REPORT OF MEETINGS FOR 1-901 



obliged to make some enclosures for grazing my horses, I 

 found the buying of hay very expensive. This made me wish 

 to have enough of my own ; yet I did little or nothing of 

 that kind for some years. But, as your grandmother was 

 a great lover of planting, she did what she could to engage 

 me to it, but in vain. At last she asked leave to go about 

 it, which she did, and I was much pleased with some little 

 things that were both well laid out and executed, though 

 none of them are now to be seen ; for, when the designs 

 grew more extensive, we were forced to take away what was 

 first done. Though the first Marquis of Tweeddale, my Lord 

 Eankeilor, Sir William Bruce, my father, with some others, 

 had planted a great deal, yet I will be bold to say that 

 planting was not well understood in this country till this 

 century began. I think it was the late Earl of Mar that 

 first introduced the wilderness way of planting amongst us, 

 and very much improved the taste of our gentlemen, who 

 very soon followed his example. I had given over my fondness 

 for sport, and began to like planting better than I had 

 done, and I resolved to have a wilderness. I fixed upon 

 some ground near my bowling green. I laid it out in a 

 centre with fourteen walks from it, the most of them having 

 tolerable good terminations. But as it was too little, in 

 some years I enlarged it greatly ; and your father, who 

 had an admirable taste, put it in the figure it is now 



in 



After the wilderness (I mean the little thing with straight 

 walks) was finished, your grandmother came to me with another 

 proposal. There was a field of three hun-Scots. acres, each 

 one fifth larger than an English acre, called the Muir of 

 Tynningham, that was common to some of my tenants and 

 a neighbouring gentleman, the ground being of very little 

 value, except some small part of it, for which one of my tenants 

 paid a trifle of rent. This ground she desired to enclose and 

 plant. It seemed too great an attempt, and almost everybody 

 advised her not to undertake it, as being impracticable, of 

 which number, I confess, I was one. But she said, if 1 would 

 agree to it, she made no doubt of getting it finished. I 

 gave her free leave. The gentleman and tenants had their 

 loss made up to them; and, in the year 1707, she began 



