ON SEA-SIDE PLANTING, ° 99 
and the mansion-house and orchard destroyed. Since that 
period the property passed by purchase through several 
families. The next rental, taken in 1733, after the estate was 
-almost entirely blown up with sand, shows the yearly value 
in money and victual to be only £494, 4s. 4d. Scots. But 
small as that amount comparatively is, it has also been extin- 
guished, and for many years the district with its broad and 
fertile fields, formerly designated “the Granary of Moray,” 
has become altogether an arid waste of shifting sand, bearing 
only the wavy ripple of the wind. Singularly enough, these 
possessions have disappeared as completely as their occu- 
pants, and their names are heard of only when the search 
of the antiquary discovers them among the musty papers 
of a bygone age, or deciphers them on the mossy tombstones 
of the old churchyard, while he seeks for their locality in 
vain. 
The south-east portion of this desert comprehends almost 
the entire property of Binsness, which measures 558 acres, 
and has of late diminished in value almost yearly, by the in- 
road of sand-drift. It stood in the cess-books of the county 
in 1667 at £390, 17s. 2d. Scots of yearly rent. It possesses 
no plantations whatever. Its arable fields have been aban- 
doned to desolation, and the whole extent was sold in 1865 
for the small sum of £660. 
Kincorth Plantations—R. Grant, Esq., of Kincorth, was the 
first to reclaim part of the sands in this quarter by plan- 
tation, and all the sandy space on his.property is now 
completely covered with thriving wood. In a report to the 
Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland, published in 
1847, he says -— 
“In the most advanced part of the plantation, which is 
now eight years old, the plants average a height of at least 
six feet, so that a man walking among them can scarcely be 
seen ; and the author may truly report, that the average 
growth of one year on the Scots firs was a foot, and on the 
larches nearly eighteen inches; while all the younger parts of 
the: plantation promise well to attain the same size at the 
