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mortuum by a previous course of white cropping. He is astonished to find the quality and quantity of his pasture miserably degenerating and diminishing, and is ready to inveigh bitterly against his soil and climate for what in truth is entirely imputable to his own improvidence, stupidity, or mismanagement.

The abuse here alluded to, occurs most frequently on some of the best islands, both in respect of climate and of soil. We saw many thousand acres of good land in that state in the Long Island, Tyree, Arran, and even in the fertile Lismore; and could not help regretting the loss thus sustained in a district perhaps the best calculated in the whole of Western Scotland for laying down land to grass with immediate profit, and at a small expence.

The preparation generally requisite is obvious and simple. Let the land be annoyed with no water that can conveniently be carried off in autumn and spring, and let it be laid down to grass while yet in good heart. No man of sense will think of taking three successive crops of barley and oats, and, finally, one of rye, without manure, excepting the first barley crop, and then laying that field down to grass. No land can bear such treatment; and those guilty of it (a numerous class in the places already alluded to) deserve to have no Christian land under their Turkish management.

2. Time of sowing.-The time of sowing such auxiliary grass seeds as the Hebridian farmer will find advisable to mix with the natural grasses of his pastures, is from the middle of April to the third week of June. They may be sown either along with oats, barley, and

fax, or alone on the light and sandy soils near the sea shore, which are liable to sand drift. In the last mentioned, they need only be slightly harrowed into the unploughed surface, and then rolled over, in order to consolidate the surface, and to preserve as much as possible the surface moisture from evaporation. This process will be found particularly advisable in the sandy districts of Islay, Tyree, Coll, and the whole of the western shore of the Long Island from Barray to the northern extremity of Lewis. The seeds of the grasses, which we have already mentioned as constituting the principal part of Hebridian herbage in the rich pastures, are those which ought to be sown. Many others might, no doubt, be introduced with advantage from other countries; but the indigenous tribes are so numerous and so excellent, that the natives need run no risk of disappointments by attempting grasses new to their soil and atmosphere. Of the last mentioned, some are recommended by persons of character and skill in the warmest terms, such, for instance, as the Irish fiorin (or more properly fiarim) grass, so trumpeted of late in various publications; but, in the meantime, abundance of the native Hebridian grasses may be procured for the purpose in view, with very little expence, by means of due diligence and attention.

III. Breaking up grass land.

There are circumstances connected with the climate of the western coast of Scotland, as well as perhaps with its soil, which demand a different mode of ma

nagement

nagement in this respect from what some good judges of English agriculture usually recommend *. We find that grass lands, especially the lowest lying and the richest, become in the west of Scotland foggy or mossy, and after six or seven years growth of that substance, carry not half the quantity of herbage which they yielded during the three or four first years after being laid down. Nor is wetness of bottom always the cause of this growth of moss. It is probably rather the effect of a moist atmosphere, and a feeble sun, aided perhaps by a mossy tendency in the generality of our soils. We know no cure for it so effectual, or so profitable at the same time, as that of breaking up the land, and taking three or four crops, white and green, in rotation, and then laying down the land in good heart and well dressed to grass. Top-dressing with calcareous and alkaline manures has also been tried and with some success, but nothing short of skilful tillage and cropping for a few years has been found a complete remedy.

The crop usually first taken from such lands in the Hebrides is potatoes or barley. It is more judicious, however, to take one of oats, as is uniformly done in the best cultivated districts of the lowlands of Scotland. After oats, a green crop, either potatoes or turnips manured, will answer, and after these barley with grass seeds may be sown, as the preparative for future pasture.

Although

* Vid. et comp. Mr Arthur Young's Address to the Board of Agriculture, May 26th 1809, p. 36, 37, 38.

Although no rents are given for permission to break up grass lands in the Hebrides, and, on the contrary, the farmers have full liberty to crop with corn all the parts of their farms which they think fit, yet, in some cases, we apprehend that a judicious landlord ought to insert some restrictions upon his tenants on this point in their leases. There is no doubt that much of the devastation occasioned by sand-drift arises from breaking up grass lands, which would be infinitely more safely, and far more profitably used under grass than under corn crops; and that many a farm is ruined, and several estates greatly injured in the Hebrides by that practice. With this exception however and a few farms of thin soil in Mull and Skye, &c. we can scarcely mention any other description of grass-land, in those extensive regions, which may not be ameliorated by a judicious rotation of culmiferous and leguminous crops after being broken up from pasturage for a series of years. It is always to be remembered, however, that we mean this merely of land in the lower grounds, and on which white crops will probably ripen, not of such land as lies too high above the level of the sea for the purposes of aration, or of rich meadow ground, such as occurs in many parts of England, and of which the herbage improves with age both in quantity and quality the longer it is kept ley, yielding a high and steady rent to the proprietor, a regular never-failing resource in pasturage to the tenant, and consequently, in the most liberal interpretation of the terms, comfort, capital, and power to the country.

CHAPTER

CHAPTER IX.

GARDENS AND ORCHARDS.

FLORA Sometimes gladdens, Pomona never feasts those isles. A few noblemen and gentlemen, indeed, possess gardens which exhibit some of the common fruit trees, and all the common garden stuffs in tolerable perfection; and, no doubt, much may, and perhaps will, be done hereafter in this department of agriculture. We found however very little worth mentioning, excepting in Bute, Islay, Gigha, Collonsay, Coll, Mull, and Skye. In the two first mentioned islands, the great proprietors have gardens nearly equal to any in the adjacent districts of the Scottish continent. Gigha and Collonsay, however, especially the latter, which is the more exposed of the two in point of situation, prove that the sea air is perfectly compatible with the beauty and health of trees, and with the utmost degree of

fertility

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