Agriculture of Scotland. 



61 



had no leisure to turn their regards to peaceful occupations, and 

 hence the wars of the Roses and of the Usurpation had passed, 

 ere we find agriculture beginning to command the general atten- 

 tion it so well deserved. Previous to this latter period, indeed, 

 some valuable works upon agricultural subjects had been pub- 

 lished, * but, from the causes already mentioned, they excited little 

 general interest among that class whose influence enabled them to 

 be of use in propagating the knowledge of the improvements re- 

 commended. 



It was not, then, until the establishment of complete order, 

 some time subsequent to the Revolution, that there appears to 

 have been any material improvement in the ordinary practice of 

 husbandry ; though, no doubt, the extent of land devoted to agri- 

 culture must, from the growing amount of the exportation of corn 

 during the early part of the eighteenth century, have been consi- 

 derably increased. The comparative prevalence of domestic quiet 

 now permitted those most directly interested in the improvement 

 of the soil to turn their anxious thoughts to a subject so closely 

 allied with their welfare, as well as the general prosperity of the 

 community. Accordingly, in Scotland, in 1723, a number of 

 landholders formed themselves into a society, under the denomi- 

 nation of The Society of Improvers in the Knowledge of Agri- 

 culture in Scotland." 



In this society Ave discover the first germ of the Highland and 

 Agricultural Society of Scotland; and although from its limited 

 numbers it did not accomplish much beyond the influence of its 

 own members, yet to this patriotic body of gentlemen may be 

 traced the introduction of some of those improvements, such as 

 the cultivation of grasses and turnips, which, above all, have 

 tended to raise the character of British agriculture. That the 

 efforts of this society were not so generally extensive, and particu- 

 larly that the example of its members was cautiously, and to a 

 very limited extent, adopted by the tenantry, may in a great mea- 

 sure have been owing to the continued unsettled state of this north- 

 ern part of the empire. Nor do we find that it was until the 

 hopes of the exiled family had finally vanished, and internal peace 

 been permanently restored by the accession of George the Third 

 (1760), that such confidence prevailed as was necessary to induce 

 men to embark capital on improvements where the prospect of 

 return was necessarily at a distant day. Hence it was that, pre- 

 vious to this time, the force of patronage, and even the example of 

 many enterprising landholders in Scotland, proved comparatively 



* e. g. Fitzherberf s Book of Husbandry ; Tusser s Five Hundred 

 Points; Sir Richard Watson's Work ; Blythe's Improver Improved; Hait- 

 leb's Legacy, &c. 



