Agriculture of Scotland. 



97 



to be grown, under the particular circumstances of the state of the 

 season or soil, can only be successfully regulated by judicious 

 observation^ and such corrections applied in the form of altered 

 management as reason and experience may dictate. It is thus that 

 barley or oats is frequently substituted for wheats beans for tur- 

 nips, when the latter have, in the previous rotations, proved perhaps 

 unsuccessful ; and it is owing to the operation of such principles 

 that pease have been justly expelled from the course in Scotland, 

 where good farming prevails. 



Live-Stock. — It is almost unnecessary to allude further to the 

 great extension and improvement in live-stock. Improved short- 

 horned cattle are now to be found, in greater or less perfection, in 

 all the lowland districts of Scotland, while in the middle and south- 

 eastern counties they are to be frequently met with of equal sym- 

 metry and weight to many of the herds in the southern part of the 

 empire. But it is chiefly in its extensive flocks of Leicester sheep 

 that Scotland may now successfully vie with her southern neigh- 

 bours. This excellent breed has now entire possession of all the 

 arable districts in the south-east of Scotland, while it is rapidly 

 being extended along the whole lowlands of the eastern coast ; and 

 indeed there is now no arable district, throughout the country, 

 where they are not known to a greater or less extent. That in 

 these circumstances there are not in Scotland, in greater numbers, 

 such men as the Bakewells and Culleys of former days, is owing, 

 perhaps, to so many possessing an equal degree of eminence for 

 these improved breeds of live-stock : but it would be unjust not to 

 mention the well-known celebrity of Captain Barclay Allardice, 

 of Ury, and Mr. Watson of Keilor, who, in the "far North," have 

 produced a breed of stock which has successfully competed with 

 the best of England. 



Nor must we omit to mention the great success which has 

 resulted from the extensive introduction of the Cheviot breed of 

 sheep into the Highlands of Scotland, which has now so rapidly 

 increased, that it is computed upwards of 100,000 sheep, 

 and 100,000 stones of wool are annually disposed of at Inver- 

 ness fair, the great proportion of them Cheviots; and from 

 Sutherland alone it is estimated that 40,000 of this breed and 

 180,000 fleeces are annually sent to the south;* and all this has 

 been effected without materially, it is supposed, having diminished 

 the value of the export of black cattle from the Highlands. It 

 should also be stated that Scotland, besides supplying herself with 

 a sufficiency of excellent farm -horses to meet her extended cul- 

 tivation, continues to export a few to the neighbouring part of the 



VOL. I. 



* Anderson's Highlands. 



H 



