446 
Sutherland Reclamation. 
want of food within a very short distance of the railway that 
might have brought them an ample and varied supply. 
Formerly there was some excuse for the exhaustion of the land 
in the difficulty of transit making it impossible to introduce 
food or to sell stock, except in store condition. Sutherland was 
then, as regards transit, more isolated than many of our colonies ; 
but it can now share in the advantages possessed by the rest of 
the kingdom, and there is no longer an excuse for continuing a 
wasteful and exhaustive system of management. 
In December 1878, an inquiry was addressed to each of the 
sheep-farmers in Sutherland asking Avhether their experience 
indicated any important change in the land during the last 
twenty-five or fifty years, as regards its power of carrying sheep. 
Unfortunately, a very severe snow-storm came on just after the 
inquiries were received, and for several weeks another and 
more urgent question absorbed the whole attention of the sheep- 
master, namely, the question of preserving the flocks while 
their ordinary food was deeply buried in the snow. 
Eleven answers were, however, received from different parts 
of the country. 
In reply to the question, " Have you observed any indications 
of change in the fertility of the green-land, or the heath-land?" 
all, without one exception, concur in the opinion that the green- 
land has very much deteriorated. 
The Master of Blantyre, in his reply, observes that when the 
crofters occupied the land, " they lived in the Straths, and only 
sent their stock (principally cattle and ponies) to the higher 
grounds when spring was well in, and brought them in early in 
autumn, much on the same principle as they do now in Switzer- 
land. Owing to this practice the out ground always had a good 
start, the mossing and deer-hair thereby never being eaten down 
as it is now, and the heather was kept in good order. Good 
green-land was formed where the cattle were folded at night, 
and on the patches cultivated near the shealings. Now all 
this is changed. The straths and the green patches (or' towns 
as they are called) have become fogged and mossed, while 
the heather has run wild and encroached upon them. The 
sheep are now kept out all the year round on the hills, and as 
soon as the mossing (cotton-grass) shows itself it is nipped off, 
and is therefore rapidly disappearing : a serious loss, since it is 
the first plant of the year, coming in about the 12th of March, 
and forming the mainstay for ewes in lamb." It should be 
noticed that the cotton-grass (^Eriophorum vafjinatum) grows 
among the heather on the black-land ; its solid fleshy stems 
are pulled like leeks by the sheep in INIarch, and it also comes 
into season again in October. There is not much of it to 
