the climate, they must, at all events, have materially counteracted the influence of the ameliorations growing out of improvements in cultivation, drainage, &c.

During summer and autumn vegetation is luxuriant, and, even in the eastern and southern districts, is very seldom interrupted or stunted from deficiency of moisture. The lateness of spring and summer, the occasional prevalence of north-easterly winds and fogs during these seasons, the variableness of the weather, the frequent short duration and rarity of sunshine in autumn, and the occurrence of high gales in September, are the principal defects, in an agricultural point of view, of the climate of Scotland; and require a degree of exertion, activity, and skill on the part of the husbandman, to secure his crop from damage, to which the farmer in the south of England is unaccustomed. These circumstances, too, either altogether prevent the cultivation of wheat to the north of the Grampians, except in a few peculiarly favourable situations along the Moray Frith, or render it uncommonly precarious. It is very rare, indeed, that crops in Scotland suffer from drought or too much heat. Almost all the bad harvests and scarcities that have occurred have been occasioned by the opposite circumstances, by cold wet summers and autumns.

In the western and northern isles, and in many parts along the western coast, the crops of corn not unfrequently suffer from the spray of the sea blighting them before they reach maturity; while high winds shake or beat the grain from the ear when ripe. Very heavy losses have sometimes occurred from these causes; and hence oats, which suffer most from high winds, are seldom allowed to stand till they be dead ripe; and are frequently, indeed, particularly on the west coast, cut down when they are a little greenish. To the circumstances now mentioned is also to be ascribed the deficiency of trees and plantations on both the west and east coasts, but especially on the former and in the Hebrides, and the Orkney and Shetland Isles. There the frequent high gales roll mountainous waves from the Atlantic, the Northern, and German Oceans, that break with tremendous violence upon precipitous cliffs, dashing the spray and foam to a very great height, and carrying them far over the land. The air is, in consequence, saturated with saline particles, which blight the buds, young leaves, and shoots of trees, and entirely prevent their growth.

The favourable influence of the climate of Scotland on the physical and mental powers of the people is sufficiently manifest. No other country, since the revival of learning, has produced, for the amount of population, so great a number of individuals distinguished in literature, science, and the arts. And, if we except the inhabitants of a few large manufacturing towns, the strength, activity, and longevity of the natives are, perhaps, nowhere exceeded. Though without any accurate data to go upon, we believe it may be truly affirmed, that the mean duration of life is greater in Scotland than in almost any other country. The number also of those who, having reached a very advanced age, still preserve their mental and bodily powers is remarkably great. It is not, however, by isolated instances that the longevity and general vigour of the inhabitants of a country should

be estimated; but, 1st, by the proportion of those who arrive at an advanced age; and, 2nd, by the bodily and mental power possessed by those who attain that age. Now, if we take these for criteria, the salubrity of the climate of Scotland is obvious. We are pretty confident, from extensive observation in different countries, that the proportion of the population that reaches 70 or 80 years of age, and the vigour then remaining, are greater in Scotland than almost anywhere else. The countries which rank next to it in these respects are England, Ireland, Norway, Denmark, the North of France, and the countries bordering on the Baltic.

We do not mean to say that other causes, and those, too, of a very powerful description, have not conspired to produce these effects; but it is admitted, on all hands, that they have not been counteracted, and it would be very easy to show, were this a proper place for such discussions, that they have been materially promoted, by the climate.

The causes of the salubrity of Scotland, and of the longevity of its inhabitants, will be shown more fully hereafter; but we may remark, that the objections urged by ill-informed and careless observers to the climate, viz., the prevalence of stormy and changeable weather, and the low range of temperature, are the chief causes of salubrity. From whatever quarter, except one, the wind may blow, a wide expanse of sea is passed over; and the air, though moist, is purified from injurious emanations, which are readily absorbed by the ocean. The country contains comparatively few physical sources of disease. Injurious exhalations from the land are scarcely anywhere observed to prevail: the low grounds in the southern counties are too highly cultivated to produce them; and the moors and mosses, in the northern and more elevated districts, consist chiefly of antiseptic substances; so that the emanations from them, though they reduce the temperature, are in no other way deleterious. Owing chiefly to the circumstance of the winds blowing over a great extent of ocean, the principal foreign matters which the air contains are watery vapour, saline particles dissolved in that vapour, and minute portions of iodinous fumes. But the temperature in the latitude of Scotland will not admit of the air holding much water in solution; and a moderate quantity of moisture is evidently conducive rather than injurious to health. The other substances specified are present in such minute proportions that no injury can result from them.

As it is known to every one who has paid the slightest attention to climate, and its influence on the human system, that Scotland is one of the most salubrious countries in the world, one of those in which female beauty and manly strength linger longest with their possessors, -it need not be matter of surprise, that so many of its sons, who select other countries for constant or occasional residence, are disappointed in their anticipations; and that they frequently bring back to their native land prolonged and dangerous diseases, the causes of which either do not exist, or occur slightly, and at short intervals, in Scotland.

For accounts of the Botany and Zoology of Scotland see the sec

SECT. 7. Civil Divisions.

In regard to the ancient history of the territorial divisions of Scotland, both civil and ecclesiastical, we find ourselves in a situation similar to that in which we stand regarding too many subjects of Scotch antiquities. We have a large mass, probably a sufficiency, of materials we find these materials digested, in so far as they are useful in determining particular local questions; but, towards founding a systematic account of the whole subject, the materials have never been, to any satisfactory extent, applied. Scotland has had some profound antiquaries, many clever ones, and a few more noted for ingenuity than honesty; but she has had neither a Camden nor a Selden.

Shires. In tracing the origin of the division of Scotland into shires, it is probable that much valuable information might be derived from the Parliamentary Records; though the system of representation for the shires was for a long period so undefined, and, when fixed, was long so ill followed out, that even from this source it would be too much to expect a complete elucidation of the subject. At any rate, no one has yet undertaken the labour which the inquiry would involve; and, in the meantime, we are reduced to take our chief information, as to the origin of shires, from the records of the appointment of the sheriffs, and the division of the country into districts, subject to these functionaries. The Latin name of the sheriff (vicecomes), and the supposed facts in the history of his office in England, have furnished some Scotch lawyers with a plausible ground for saying, that the sheriff was originally the deputy of the comes or earl. But however the etymology may bear, and whatever may have been the origin of English sheriffdoms, no evidence whatever is believed to exist in Scotch history to show that Scotch sheriffs, even on the first institution of their office, were deputed by or connected with the earls. And it is, at all events, certain that, from the time when sheriffdoms became common, the country continued to be gradually divided into shires, and subjected to the jurisdiction of sheriffs, without the smallest regard to the powers of the earls, or the territorial extent or boundaries of earldoms. The old earldom of Lennox included several districts, which, at a very early period, were divided into separate shires or sheriffdoms: the shire of Perth, again, included several earldoms; and some districts, of which Berwickshire is one, were erected into shires, without seeming to have been ever under an earl.

No trace of sheriffdoms in Scotland has been found further back than the twelfth century. The office and the territorial division are mentioned in the reigns of Alexander I. and David I.; but a considerable period elapsed before the office, or the division of territory, became general. Some districts, indeed, as Galloway, Ross, and the Western Isles, were not placed permanently under sheriffs for some centuries after that time: with these exceptions, however, Scotland appears to have been universally divided into shires, each subject to its local judge, the sheriff, as early as the accession of Robert the Bruce. The sheriff was the king's judge, and his powers, and the

boundaries of his shire, were determined by royal grant; but so early as the period last mentioned, the right of sheriffdom seems, by a mischievous anomaly, to have been sanctioned by law as hereditary right, indefeasible in the family of the grantee. Other partial rights of jurisdiction from the crown sometimes attached to territory, sometimes independent of land, and called sheriffdoms, or stewartries, but both kinds common, and embracing parts of almost every shire in Scotland, operated yet further to defeat one of the great purposes of the division into shires; and in this state matters continued till 1747. In that year an act of parliament abolished all hereditary jurisdictions, except those sheriffdoms which extended over whole shires, and resumed to the crown, to be disposed of by it, the sheriffdoms which were in this position. The act settled the appointment of the sheriff's on the same footing in most material respects, on which it now stands; and it left the division of the shires as it had formerly been, with the exception of some cases, where two small shires were united under one sheriff. It may be worth while to notice, that there is in Scotland no trace of the minor divisions of the English shires, called hundreds, wapentakes, and the like.

Parishes. Some writers have pretended to find the institution of parishes in Scotland as far back as the ninth century: but the evidence is very weak, and the arguments rendered very unsatisfactory, by the looseness of the phraseology used in the documents founded on; for the word parochia certainly meant, anciently, not parish, but diocese; and in some of the oldest deeds, which have clear reference to parishes, the name used is the Saxon word shire. Charters and other writs make it certain, however, that the parochial division had been introduced and was familiar in Scotland by the middle of the twelfth century; and canons of the Scottish clergy, passed at two of their general councils, held about the middle of the thirteenth century (1242 and 1269), distinctly recognise the universal existence of the parochial clergy, and the allotment of a fixed district or parish to each individual.

Till the Reformation, the bishops retained the power of uniting and disjoining parishes, and were, probably, the parties who originally introduced the division. Between the Reformation and the Union, several successive commissions of the Scotch parliament held, besides powers regarding teinds or tithes, authority also to unite and disjoin parishes. In 1707, Parliament transferred the powers of those commissions to the Court of Session, continuing to this new commission the powers of the older ones over tithes, and full power to unite and annex parishes; but, for the protection of the tithe-payers, limiting their power of disjoining parishes, transplanting old churches, or erecting new ones, to cases where consent is given by persons possessing 3-4ths of the valued rent of the parish. Under that commission the court continue to act.

SECT. 8. Statistical Notices of the different Scotch Counties.

Scotland is divided into 33 counties. We shall notice them in succession, beginning with the most southerly,

1. Wigtownshire, a maritime county, occupying the south-west extremity of Scotland, is bounded on the west and south by the Irish Sea; on the north by Ayrshire; and on the east by the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright. It contains 293,760 acres, of which about a third may be arable. Surface hilly, but the hills do not rise to any considerable height. It is divided into 3 districts, viz., the Machars, extending from Wigtown and Portwilliam to the Burrow Head; the Rhynns, comprising the peninsula formed by Loch Ryan and the bay of Luce, terminating in the mull of Galloway on the south, and Corsewall Point on the north; and the Moors, or upper district. The soil of the first two districts is for the most part a hazelly loam, dry and well adapted for the turnip husbandry; but near the town of Wigtown there is a considerable extent of rich alluvial land. The moors, which are bleak and barren, comprise more than a third part of the county. Climate mild, but rather moist. Property in a few hands, and mostly under entail; farms middle sized, and uniformly almost let on leases for 19 years. Agriculture in this, as in most other Scotch counties, was formerly in the most barbarous and wretched state imaginable. There was no rotation of crops; the processes and implements were alike execrable; the pasture land was overstocked; and the occupiers steeped in poverty. Marl, of which Galloway contained immense quantities, began to be discovered and applied to the land about 1730; and for a while it caused an astonishing improvement in the corn crops. But their unceasing repetition reduced the soil to its former sterility; and convinced the landlords that marling, which promised so much, and from which so much had been realised, could be of no permanent utility to their estates, unless the tenants were restrained from overcropping. In consequence, principally of this feeling, but partly, also, of the diffusion of intelligence as to such subjects, it was the usual practice, previously to the American war, to prohibit tenants from taking more than three white crops in succession; and it was also usual to prohibit them from breaking up pasture land until it had been at least 6 or 9 years in grass. This practice, barbarous as it is, was a vast improvement on that by which it had been preceded; and it prevailed generally throughout Galloway and Dumfriesshire till the beginning of the present century; and in some backward parts lingers even to this day. But in all the best parts of the district two white crops are now rarely seen in succession; and every department of husbandry has been signally and astonishingly improved. Generally, however, the county is more suitable for pasture than for tillage; and it, as well as Kirkcudbright, suffered a good deal from overcropping between 1809 and 1815. Oats and barley principal crops; wheat, however, is now raised in considerable quantities. Potatoes largely cultivated. Turnips have been long introduced, but it is only within the last dozen years that their culture has become an object of general attention; it is now rapidly extending, and large quantities of bone-dust Farm-houses and are imported as manure for the turnip lands. Roads new, and offices mostly new, substantial, and commodious. for the most part excellent. Breed of cattle polled, and one of the best in the empire. Breed of sheep in the low grounds various; in