ImproKement of Waste Lands. 
327 
have been expended on our corn-growing lands, would tliey 
not have been rewarded by equally good results? 
I have hitherto spoken of such improvements as the miner, 
with little aid from his landlord, may accomplish ; but to obtain 
a thoroughly good state of cultivation, the land in most places 
must be trenched, and this involves a large outlay. Much, 
however, of the waste lands south of the Scottish Border affords a 
much better subject to work upon, and the work itself could be 
done much more cheaply than that in the north of Scotland, to 
which I am about to refer. On the estate of Ardross, in Ross-shire, 
thousands of acres of waste lands have recently been reclaimed, 
nearly all of which have been trenched. I will give an outline of 
these improvements as an example worthy of being followed 
in England ; and if it cannot be said that in all cases they are 
remunerative, yet owing to the difference of climate a better 
return from similar work may be calculated upon. 
The estate of Ardross, the property of Alexander Matheson, 
Esq., M.P., is situated in the county of Ross, about 10 or 11 
miles north-east of Dingwall, and stretches across from the shore 
of the Frith of Cromarty to the confines of Dornoch Frith, near 
Bonar Bridge, a distance of about 20 miles. 
Ardross proper is almost surrounded by hills, and would have 
formed one large " corry " or concave opening between hills, 
with the lake of Achanacloich in the east, and the river Alness 
running through the west from north to south, had it not been 
that there are two hills in the centre which divide it into two, 
or perhaps I might say three, valleys or straths. 
These hills, though of considerable elevation, exhibit the 
conical shape of the Northumberland fells rather than the pre- 
cipitous form so peculiar to North Britain, and, with few excep- 
tions, are not too steep for agricultural operations. 
The climate is moist. The fall of rain during the year 1864 
was 35 'S^ inches at an altitude of 450 feet. The season of 
harvest is generally about the middle of September ; wheat 
is largely cultivated, and also barley, but oats are the predominant 
grain crop. The number of tenants before the improvements 
commenced was nineteen ; the sheep-walk, including the arable 
farms of Gledfield and the two Fearns, being then in the 
proprietor's hands. Eighteen of these tenants had farms vary- 
ing from six to twenty acres, consisting chiefly of shapeless, 
half-cultivatted patches or crofts ; the one remaining farm of 
Easter Ardross, which was Avell cultivated, being reputed to com- 
prise about 400 acres. But the quantity cultivated in any shape 
was a mere trifle compared with the vast uncultivated lands 
around, which for the most part were covered with heather, inter- 
spersed here and there with patches of coarse grass, bogs, and 
