70 



Agriculture of Scotland. 



cleaning or weerling-plough, acted upon by one horse (to operate 

 between the narrow rows)^ had for some time been of general 

 application. 



The threshing-machine^, that prince of improvements^ and 

 liberal regulator of supplies alike to the necessities of the 

 farmer's purse and to the comfort of the cattle in his folds, had 

 not at this time been perfected. The ingenious inventor of this 

 machine^ upon the principle in present operation, had previous to 

 this indeed constructed a wheel to move a set of flails, which met 

 with some encouragement ; but hitherto the barn- work was almost 

 universally performed by the slow and imperfect operation of the 

 hand-flail, which, besides that it rendered the personal attendance 

 of the farmer, to the sacrifice of other matters, very unremitting, 

 deteriorated materially the quality and condition of the grain 

 in so moist a climate as that of Scotland. 



Manure. — The use of lime in the culture of land seems to 

 have been, at the period of which we speak, of very general 

 application; and it was by means of this very valuable 

 stimulant that so rapid an encroachment appears to have been 

 made upon the large proportion of land possessed as out-field 

 not very long previously. No great judgment seems, however, 

 to have been generally exercised in its free use; nor did any 

 general rule, even in the same district, obtain as to the quan- 

 tity requisite to produce a given effect. Upon apparently 

 the same species of soils we find this quantity vary from 

 eighty to thirty bolls ; and, while many preferred administering a 

 large dose to effect the purposes of a lease, some renewed the ap- 

 plication at each return of the fallow- crop. In either case, how- 

 ever, it was too much the practice immediately to exhaust the 

 effects of this manure by too frequent a repetition of corn-crops, 

 and thus to reduce the soil to a greater state of sterility than if no 

 such stimulant had been used. Marl-pits were also pretty exten- 

 sively opened in some of the higher districts of the country ; but, 

 excepting in the neighbourhood of towns, no manure, beyond 

 what was produced on the farm, was ever applied. 



In few respects were agriculturists so far behind as in the 

 management of this essential requisite of successful cultivation ; 

 and, although we have seen there was at this time the embryo of 

 nearly every approved practice of modern days, yet we find very 

 few traces of any attempt to economise manures, or assist their 

 fertility. Without noticing that in those times straw was gene- 

 rally very insufficiently made down," as it is technically called, 

 from the small number of cattle maintained in the winter season, 

 the dung was allowed to accumulate in the yard, untouched, 

 until it was required to be ploughed into the land. Hence it was 



