to stage, and through the very channel here recommended, and by means of the wealth derived from this husbandry, prosecute various branches of agriculture now unattempted, and set that example for useful imitation to their fellow-citizens, which it is now their ●wn interest and their honour to adopt.

CHAPTER VIII.

GRASS LAND.

SECTION I.-MEADOWS.

THOSE lands in the Hebrides which may be strictly denominated meadows, lie near the sea shore, and are overflown by high spring-tides, or they are liable to be inundated by the adjoining lakes, rivers, or torrents. Their extent is about twenty-five thousand acres. They never undergo aration, or indeed any species of culture or improvement. All the aid which they receive from art consists in a sort of partial and very imperfect draining in spring and summer. No manure, no topdressing, weeding, or regular irrigation is administered; and accordingly these meadows, though valuable on account of the extreme scarcity of winter provender in the district, yield not half the quantity of hay

or

or pasture, nor any thing approaching to the quality, which skilful management would make them to produce. The general average of hay upon them is about a ton and a quarter per Scots acre, or nearly 160 stones of 171⁄2 lbs. per stone, and that of very coarse quality, frequently damaged or spoiled in harvesting, and rarely secured in the stack till the middle or end of October. The lateness of hay harvest, in consequence of this mismanagement of their natural meadows, is one of the greatest disadvantages under which the Hebrides labour; and what makes it the more serious is, that almost the whole of their cut grasses are drawn from those meadows. When it happens to rain violently for some days in the beginning of September, and when similar weather recurs about the usual time of mowing these meadows, the whole crop is totally lost, and extreme distress and ruin follow. At all seasons the hay harvest solicits the farmer's care at the same time with his potatoes, inclosures, roads, and other avocations which usher in the Hebridian winter; and the natural consequence is, that they are all wretchedly performed, and at a great expence of time and labour. All these inconveniencies might be avoided by good management in nine instances out of ten. The hay which, by reason of neglect, is thrown back to the middle of October, might be cut down, nearly ripe, towards the end of August, and before the oat harvest or potatoegathering commences. The isles generally enjoy fine weather till the middle of September, after which period, the farmer cannot reckon with any sort of security upon 24 successive hours of dry weather till the beginning of March. This description, it is true, does U 2

not

not apply to all the Hebrides indiscriminately, some of them being low, and usually favoured with long tracts of mild and dry weather even in winter; but it holds strictly true of the greater number of the larger isles, and indeed of all of them excepting Bute, Islay, and North Uist.

It is well known, that where meadows of the description now under review are properly water-fed, they throw up a greater weight of herbage than any other land whatever; and that by top-dressing occasionally, and drying their surface of stagnant water, the quality of the herbage may be brought to as great perfection as that of any other ground. The Secretary of the Board of Agriculture in his report of Sussex mentions, "Meadows which formerly let at 5s. the acre, now, after watering, let at 40s. and are valued at 60s." We have seen improvements to a similar amount prosecuted to an immense extent in Dorsetshire and Wilts.

The rents paid for meadows in the Hebrides can in no case be ascertained with precision. In some districts they are very considerable, if taken comparatively with the rest of the farm; but in others, their management is so miserably bad, that it were perhaps too high to estimate them at 2s. per acre per annum. There is no doubt but these very meadows might be speedily brought, by draining, irrigation, and top-1 dressing, to fetch ten times that sum, and, over and above, to afford incalculable benefit and accommodation to their possessors and proprietors.

The expence of mowing, stalking, and harvesting meadow hay is greater in the Hebrides than in any part of our empire, if we consider the sacrifice of other ob

jects,

jects, of time and of servant's labour, which they require. On comparing these different processes on the various isles, with the price of provisions and of labour, we could not estimate the harvesting of a ton of meadow hay, the average produce of an English acre, at less than L.2, which is one-third of its value; and in bad seasons at L.2. 10s. or even L.3 per ton.

SECTION II.-PASTURES.

THESE Constitute a most important part of Hebridian rural economy. By much the larger portion of all the isles is devoted to pasture, and will long remain so. Lands are let according to the quantity and quality of their natural grasses in three-fourths of those isles, without paying much regard to other considerations; and even upon the islands which are not so exclusively given up to pasturage, but where corn, kelp, and fisheries occupy a share of the public attention, the quantity of land in natural pastures is very considerable. Exclusively of what may properly be called wastes, and of which we shall give an account hereafter, there are in the Hebrides of the denomination under our immediate review, about 200,000 acres, which are either in U 3

some