210
EXPENCE AND PROFIT OF LAND
proprietors, and from many intelligent, industrious, and en-terprising fanners. Nay, it was not till after the calamitous,season of 1782, that the turnip husbandry, and the raising ofartificial grasses, were generally known in the northern coun-ties.
At present, from Berwick to Inverness , the agriculture ofthe east coast of Scotland is in a state of rapid improvement:even in the pastoral districts, an improved cultivation of thearable land, and a better mode of managing land in pasture,is spreading, not only in the southern counties, but onthe west of Scotland, and in the Hebrides ; though the greatproportion of mountainous surface, and the humidity of theclimate, render the counties, which border on the Atlantic,more proper for rearing or fattening live-stock, than for rais-ing com.
The size of arable farms has not only been enlarged in theprincipal farming counties on the east coast, from Berwickto Aberdeenshire ; but the fanners have reclaimed much bar-ren land, have greatly improved what was formerly under animperfect cultivation: and, profiting by their experience,have increased both in skill and in capital. Hence they havebeen able to pay a much higher rent to the landholder, byraising a much greater real value of produce from the soil.Nay, in the northern counties, where the farms are of smallerdimensions, viz. from Banff' to Inverness , an improved agri-culture, (evidenced by sowing turnips and artificial grasses),has become very general; and although the system of tacks-men, (and, in some places in Sutherland, of wadsetters), stillprevails, yet many examples of good husbandry are to be foundin East Ross, Cromarty, and Caithness.
The expence of farming has no doubt increased, in a muchhigher ratio, than that either of the depreciation of money,or the rise of rent to the landlord: but this has been accom-panied by such improvements in farm buildings, inclosures,implements of husbandry, and, in the more correct cultiva-tion of the soil, that Scottish farmers in general have a