Sutherland Reclamation. 
447 
be seen in the Shinness district, but it is still abundant in Kil- 
donan. 
Several of my correspondents say they have not noticed any 
marked deterioration in the black-land. From one farm the 
reply is that heath-land, when regularly burnt and not over- 
stocked, is quite as productive as it used to be. Mr. Sidney 
Hadwin, of West Garty, finds that where the green-land was 
once good pasture, it is now much fogged with moss and grown 
over with heather. Mr. William Houstoun says that in the 
Achintoul district the green-land " has steadily decreased in 
value, and that owing to its throwing up moss instead of grass 
it will not now keep as much stock." He does not suppose the 
heath-land has deteriorated much. Mr. William Mitchell, of 
Ribigill, has " not the least doubt that the green-land has lost 
its fertility to a great extent. Grass grows quite thin and 
weakly, where thirty years ago there was luxuriant herbage of 
different kinds of natural grasses." He has improved the black 
parts of his farm by draining and burning, and believes that 
this has prevented the stock being reduced by at any rate 
10 per cent. 
Mr. W. J. Paterson, of Armadale, writes that he has yearly 
observed a change for the worse both in the green and the 
heath-lands. 
Mr. T. Purvis, of Rhifail, says that " the green-land is 
gradually getting more and more exhausted, but there is not 
much change on heath or other pastures for better or worse." 
Mr. R. Rutherford, of Kildonan, writes, " I have observed 
that the green-land does not grow half the grass it grew about 
forty years ago, and there is not the feeding substance in what 
it does grow there was at that time. I do not think the heath- 
land is much deteriorated." 
Mr. P. P. Sellar, of Strathnaver, after observing that it is 
now sixty years since the greater part of the farms in the county 
were stocked with sheep, states that " green-land that had been 
previously cropped is poorer than it was for the first thirty or 
forty years after it was let out to grass. There is not much 
change during the last twenty years in the fertility of the good 
green-land, the light land is poorer in that time. There is a 
smaller extent of green-land, both that which may have been at 
one time cropped, and what was green naturally, as heather is 
encroaching on it to a considerable extent, for it is not allowed 
to be burned as formerly. There is no change in the natural 
fertility of the heath-land. The heath-plants being less burned, 
sheep are obliged to depend on the green-land more than 
formerly for their food. They get a much larger proportion of 
their pasture from the rough hill-plants than from the green-land." 
2 G 2 
