132 RENTS. 



would see the hedges, belts, and clumps of trees 

 already grown to considerable height, fields brought 

 into regularity and order, and spirit and activity 

 ever^'where displayed upon something like systematic 

 principles." 



The change is further seen by the rent and value 

 of lands at these difi'erent periods. The rent of the 

 whole parish of Ardrossan was about £603 in 1749, 

 £3,433 in 1795, and £6,098 in l^OS.i^ In Grougar 

 parish, Alton gives the valuation of one piece of 70 

 acres at £170 in 1742, and £7,000 in 1811. The 

 whole arable lands of the parish of Kilmarnock wei-e 

 placed in 1763 at 2J to 3 shillings per acre ; their 

 rental in 1811 was twenty times that sum.'^ Yet 

 during this time the price of wheat, taken in average 

 periods of ten years, had changed but very little ; 

 the price of bear or barley had advanced greatly, 

 while there was a steady advance in the price of oats 

 and oatmeal.^" But little wheat could have entered 

 into the consumption of the people, for until the year 

 1785 but little was seen beyond the limits of a noble- 

 man's farm.**^ The increase in the price of the staple 

 products of oats and barley could not have justified 

 the increased rents, were it not for the increased 

 production. 



It may be well to inquire into the causes for this 

 change. The atrocious i-eligious persecutions had left 

 the country at the close of the seventeenth century in 

 a bad state, and had imbued the people of the earlier 



'« Aiton, op. cit. p. 168. "> Alton, op. cil. p. 171. 



" Aiton, op. cit. p. 169. 2' Gazetteer of Scotland, i, 90. 



