on in Scotch farm-house kitchens, and the
arguments are sometimes conducted with a
knowledge of the bearings of the question at
issue which is perfectly surprising. I met a
ploughman who knew a good deal—a good deal
more than I did—about the chemistry of
manures. He said that Liebig was a clever
man who had done a great service to agriculturists,
but his theory was not always sustained
by actual practice. I met a common gardener
who carried a microscope in his pocket, and
could tell me the botanical name of every flower
in the district. He knew also the different
kinds of wild birds. Another, a ploughman,
had a small library by his bed in the loft over
the stable. Among his books I observed an
abridgment of Hume and Smollett's History of
England, and an expensive edition of Goldsmith's
Earth and Animated Nature, which he had taken
in in parts. Scott's novels and Burns's poems
are to be found in the humblest houses of
Scotland, and illustrations from the works of both
writers are familiar in every mouth.

The Scotch are said to be much given to
whisky; but the rural population have very
few opportunities of indulging a taste for
strong drink of any kind. I have now in my
eye half a dozen Scotch parishes of great
extent, which have only one public-house each.
In any one of them, these drinking-shops are
within easy reach of only two or three farms.
The majority of Scotch farm-servants never
taste whisky, except at the end of the term
(their half year's period of service); when they
make holiday, dress themselves in their best,
and go to the feeing-market at the next town.
At such times they do indulge rather freely;
and not unfrequently the market ends in a series
of faction fights. Great efforts are now being
made to do away with feeing-markets, and
substitute registry-offices instead.

A certain kind of immorality, which undoubtedly
prevails among the rural classes of Scotland,
is the fruit of a system which is in other respects
advantageous. The system raises the rate of
bastardy, but it keeps down pauperism. For
example: in the country districts of England, many
of the labourers who work upon the farms, and
earn from nine to twelve shillings a week, live
in little houses of their own; which encourages
them to marry. In Scotland, the labourers for
the most part live with their masters in the
farm-house, and take their wages partly in board
and lodging. It is thus a disadvantage for a
Scotch ploughman to be married; he cannot
take his wife to his master's house; and a
house for her own use would be an unnecessary
expense, even if a small dwelling suitable for
her could be obtained. The consequence is,
that farm-servants in Scotland generally remain
unmarried. The evil results will be obvious;
but you do not find whole families in a district
throwing themselves upon the parish; and in
Scotland the degrading spectacle of labourers
broken down with age and service, going up to
some sentimental meeting of their masters to
receive a prize of a pair of cord breeches for
long service, and consequent destitution and
helplessness, is utterly unknown. There is no
poverty like that of the Dorsetshire labourer,
among the same class in Scotland. A Scotch
farm-servant gets from six to twelve pounds per
annum, and his board and lodging. He has
only to provide himself with clothes, and such
luxuries as snuff and tobacco. When he is a
bachelor, which he generally is, he has no care
whatever as to the means of living.

The care and economy displayed in Scotch
farming offer a marked contrast to the rude
and careless modes of cultivation which are
adopted on the richer soils of the south. The
Scotch would not get a living out of their stubborn
soil by the easy, happy-go-lucky style of
tillage which prevails in some of the southern
counties of England. Look at a Kentish plough
and look at an Aberdeen one. The former, a
rude lumpy arrangement of wood, little better
than the tree which the Spaniard drags over
his fertile field; the latter, a trim neat implement,
constructed wholly of iron—light, manageable,
and almost as precise in its operations as
a mathematical instrument. Ploughing is a
fine-art in Scotland. It is a ploughman's pride
to rule a field with furrows as straight and
regular as a copy-book. There is no waste of
labour nor power. There are only two horses
and one man to a plough. The carts, the
harrows, the sowing-machines, are all constructed
on the best principle, neat in form, regular—
almost elegant—in action. There is nothing
rude or clumsy about Scotch agricultural
implements. All the new discoveries as to the
chemical properties of manures, are well
understood and generally acted upon. The earth is
nursed like a weak child—taken on the knee,
as it were, and fed with a spoon. The reward
of all this tender care is often pitiful to behold.
A field of turnips or potatoes with a score of
barren patches; a field of oats whose straw in
some parts is only a foot high, which is still
hopelessly green when the snow begins to fall.
In these northern districts which I am now
visiting, whole fields are lost every year. The
crop does not come up, or it does not ripen, or it
ripens too fast and is thrashed out by the wind
before it is cut. The people have a hard fight
with nature here; but, though vanquished oft,
they never despair. They are a philosophical as
well as a persevering race.

The hospitality of the country people in Scotland
is overpowering. Go where you will, into
the castle of the laird, or into the cot of the
peasant, you must eat and drink on the instant.
No matter whether you are hungry and thirsty;
no matter what the hour of the day. If
there be nothing in the house but whisky,
you must drink whisky. Whisky at early
morn, whisky at noon, whisky at eve. Under
the obligations of festive courtesy, which
in this country hold it to be almost penal to
shirk the whisky-bottle when it comes round,
I am nearly killing myself drinking drams
and tumblers of toddy. After a time I find it
convenient to carry about with me a bottle of