meal is not worth half the labour which it costs. There is no doubt, therefore, but the grey oat should be entirely given up with any view to the meal which it yields; and, accordingly, we pass to the consideration of such oats as ought to be introduced and extended through the Hebrides. These are of four kinds.

1. White Oats.-This kind was not known in the Hebrides till the year 1748, when it was introduced by some public spirited gentlemen who had just returned from England and the south of. Scotland, and seen the management of it in both countries. So great is the superiority of this oat to the common grey Hebridian, that we have seen a field this season in North Uist, and that too of deep peat-moss, which yielded ten bolls of meal per acre; whereas the grey kind, with the same management and manure, on the same soil, scarcely yielded two bolls of a very inferior quality of meal. The intrinsic value of the crops, straw

The crop of white oats,

included, was as six to one. fodder included, would have sold at L.24 per acre, this year of scarcity, on the spot, whereas L.4 would have been a high price for the other.

Of all the different varieties of this grain, the Blainslie oat, which is cultivated on high cold land in Lauderdale, is reckoned the best for the Hebrides. It is early, and yet the grain is so closely embraced by the husk that it rarely shakes or suffers any essential injury from the storms. These are advantages of immense importance in this climate, and recommend the introduction of this oat wherever a tolerable soil can be found for it.

2. The species commonly called Polish, Friesland, or Dutch oat, (for those are only different names for the same grain,) is remarkable for its quick vegetation and its early maturity, and has become accordingly a great favourite in many parts of Scotland. It is subject to one serious inconvenience in the isles, i.e. being easily shaken. In well sheltered situations, however, and on sharp low soils, it will answer extremely well, for it gives a great return in meal-has excellent straw-and yields a very palatable species of meal. Tweddale seems to be its head-quarters in this kingdom, where it was, in 1748, first raised by Mr Montgomery of Magbiehill, by whose name it still goes in that country. On late and backward soils, it ripens frequently when the Blainslie oat fails. Upon the whole, however, the latter should be more extensively cultivated in the tempestuous Hebrides.

3. The black oat, often called the Forfarshire or Mearns oat, is sown in cold and exposed situations with much advantage. It is called black, not on account of any blackness in the meal, which is as clear and fine as that of any other kind of oats, but because the husk is dark, and 'communicates a dismal hue to the field on which it grows. This species should be sown on the poorer sorts of soils, and on land which is low rented and requires pulverization. Some farmers use it with success for the first season of newly reclaimed land, where they frequently receive good crops without any manure having been applied. They then manure for a green crop, and the ground speedily comes into good tilth and good heart.

4. Potatoe oats, as the largest grained and the most luxuriantly eared of this species of crop is now commonly denominated, are pretty generally introduced into the Highlands of Scotland, and have lately made their appearance in most of the larger Hebrides. We saw an excellent specimen of their cultivation at Capt. Cameron's, Lord Macdonald's chamberlain, in North Uist, and had unquestionable evidence of the advantage which may be derived from raising them on peatmoss, soils. The crop was a most capital one, and yielded about 12 bolls of grain, and very nearly 12 bolls of meal per Scots acre.

This sort of oat, however, does not answer on poor, light, or very high land. It may promise well at first; but if the soil is not in good order, and tolerably deep, it will fall off in July, and the crop will totally fail. We found this to be the case with a field of it in Barray, and with several fields in Mull and Tyree.

With regard to oats, as well as barley, a change of seed is very desirable, and indeed indispensable to carrying the management of them to any degree of perfection.

It is unnecessary, and would be tedious, to enter in detail on the management of oats in the Hebrides. They are usually sown in April, and reaped in September, or early in October. The rest of their treatment is pretty similar to that of barley, as far as they are paid any attention to, or considered likely to repay the trouble of reaping and harvesting. It frequently happens that the crop is so miserable as to make it advisable to drive the herds through it, and to consume it as grass, one half being trampled under

foot;

foot; and thus it completes the impoverishment of the land without yielding almost any return to the tenant.

Bread is made of oats in different ways on the different islands. In some, as for instance in the Long Island and the adjacent islets, it is manufactured as already described, precisely like barley-meal. At a few places we met with the pernicious custom of burning the straw and husk, and making what is called graddan bread. This is probably the mode practised by the ancient Jews and other oriental nations, and which we translate parching. One-third of the straw and all the chaff are burnt as a sacrifice to the laziness of the operators, or to their epicurism; for they allege that the graddan bread is particularly wholesome and palatable. We found it rather unpleasant, on account of its burnt pealy taste; but would probably be reconciled to it in the course of time.

The recommendation of that compendious mode of dressing oats, is its simplicity and quickness. In half an hour's time from plucking the oats out of the ground, we ate the graddaned cake. The operation of preparing it was simply this: The ears were thrown in small heaps upon a clean hearth, burnt, gathered up, the grain of a dark brown colour, half burnt, broken with a hand mill, called a quern *, into a sort of coarse meal; and this meal, with a little salt and water, made into cakes, and roasted before the fire.

* The quern is forbidden on some Hebridian estates, as defrauding the miller of some part of his dues. It is called in Gallic Brá-bhleth, i- e. grinding noisy stone.

The price of oats in the Hebrides is always higher than in any other part of Scotland, because upwards of 20,000 bolls are annually imported at an average, and the freight, profits of the merchant, and insurance, must amount to at least two shillings per boll over and above the low-country market price. This is a tax of L. 2000 per annum laid on the poor Hebrides by their worst enemy, i. e. their remote situation.

To a benevolent traveller, nothing can be more distressing than to see immense tracts of waste land, close by the sea side, and easily susceptible of improvement and tillage, while the natives loiter about with halfstarved anxious faces, inquiring when and where the meal vessel (as they call the ships freighted by their landlords for carrying oat-meal from Clyde, Ireland, or the east of Scotland) is likely to make her appearance. In the isles of Skye, Lewis, and Uist, there are waste lands, not 200 feet above the level of the sea, or one mile distant from it, sufficient for feeding the whole population of those islands; and what is peculiarly provoking, these lands, whose natives thus suffer, not only are well calculated for oats, but they also belong to men eminent for charity, humanity, and goodness of heart.

SECTION VIII.-PEAS.

WE have found so few fields of peas which could be reckoned tolerable, in the course of the tour, that,

however