Report on some features of Scottish Agriculture. 147 
must be prominently recorded if only for the purpose of showing 
that any misconceptions that I may have formed on the subject 
of this Report are not the result of any want of effort to enlighten 
mc in the " Land o' Cakes." 
I. Lowland Farming. 
The descriptions of the farms illustrating the prominent 
features of lowland farming require to be prefaced by such a 
general sketch of Scottish agriculture as will enable them to be 
understood as examples of the bearing of certain parts on the 
working of the whole system. The variations in the arable 
farming of Scotland depend chiefly upon climate, and the con- 
dition of climate may be easily resolved into three elements, viz. : 
— distance from the coast, height above the sea, and longitude 
(which means amount of rainfall). The other conditions which 
influence the operations of agriculture have, of course, their due 
weight ; but that weight is light in comparison with what is due 
to the elements just enumerated. Even latitude, which is pro- 
minent as a climatic element in Englibh farming, has small in- 
fluence on the climate of Scotland, as compared with the height 
of the farm above the sea-level. It is, therefore, no unusual 
thing to find a farm whose natural harvest-time is a good fort- 
night in advance of one not more than two miles off. In East 
Lothian, for instance, the earliest region is that which skirts the 
coast ; its elevation is small, and its naturally mild climate 
is ameliorated by the softening influences of the sea. A little 
further inland the country is more elevated, and the land becomes 
stronger, losing much of its "kindness;" here the harvest is 
from ten to fourteen days later, and one may look down from 
a field where the reaping-machines have just commenced, to a 
belt of country which is being rapidly denuded of its ripened 
sheaves. The hills form the background of both these areas ; 
but there, owing partly to the configuration of the surface, partly 
to the nature of the soil, and partly to the roughness of the 
climate, which is strictly in keeping with the ruggedness of 
the country, agriculture assumes a purely pastoral character. 
The juxtaposition of hill and plain in Scotland has been turned 
to good account by the enterprising farmer, who has found it pro- 
fitable to rent a certain amount of " hill " as a sheep-breeding 
adjunct to his feeding establishment in the plain. This system 
has of late assumed such proportions that, owing to the increased 
facilities of transit, it is no unusual thing for an occupier of 
arable land in the east to hold a sheep-farm in the west. He 
finds it more profitable, and in other ways more satisfactory, to 
breed his own " wedders " than to trust to the chances of markets 
and prices for supplying the wants of his home-farm. Here» 
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