OF SCOTLAND.

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tricts, and is chiefly attended to in regard to wheat and oats,and in a less degree to barley, pulse, turnips, ruta-baga, andpotatoes. The seeds of the different clovers are seldom raisedin Scotland , where the climate is not sufficiently genial forbringing them to maturity: but, as their seeds are importedevery year for the use of Scotch husbandry, from England,Holland, or France, and may be procured from America ,every year there is an effectual change, so far as they areconcerned.

The production of seed of superior quality, by means ofcareful and judicious attention, is sometimes carried on as apeculiar and almost exclusive employment, especially on smallfarms •, and those husbandmen who devote themselves in aparticular manner to this object, can always command a muchhigher price than others for the grain produced upon theirfarms, by selling the whole of it for seed among their neigh-bours. Having once acquired a select unmixed variety of aparticular grain, they carefully cull or hand-pick a smallquantity of the crop every year, giving the most minute atten-tion to remove every particle of admixture, that has the small-est tendency towards blending or deterioration. In potatoeoats, for instance, they pick out and reject every grain that isnot plump and short, or that has the smallest appearance of atail or awn. This culled or selected quantity is sown by it-self, at some distance from any other crop of the same speciesof grain. Its produce is carefully preserved separate fromthe rest of the crop, and is sown next year upon a largerbreadth of the seed-farm; and the produce of this is sold aspicked or selected seed. The precaution of sowing at a dis-tance from any other crop of the same species, is to avoid thedanger of any hybrid or mongrel production, through im-pregnation from the polen, or fecundating dust of any otherspecies or variety. This precaution is most essentially neces-sary in cultivating ruta-baga for seed, as that plant is pecu-liarly liable to injury, by growing in the neighbourhood ofany other of the same order, that happens to be in flower atthe same time.