Ian D. Rotherham and David McCallam
80
ridgemuir, Ayrshire, winner of a Highland Society Gold Medal for
“his extensive improvement of a large tract of Moss on his property”.
20 In brief, the procedure involves cutting out master drains,
eight feet wide by four feet deep, tapering to two and a half feet deep
at their extremity; marking out ridges in the top soil and cutting them
in one-foot-wide strips; turning them with “a gentle declivity” towards
furrows, before dressing them with lime, and later dung. The dung is
carried onto the moorlands by a single-horse cart along a drained and
gravelled track which is also used for removing crops later from the
reclaimed land.
21 Oats are suggested as a potential first crop; but in
practice the Ayrshire farmer prefers potatoes.
22 This exemplary text
follows the two key strictures of the “improvers” of marshes and fens:
it reclaims “waste and barren grounds” and cultivates them with innovative crop rotation doing away with the need for land to lie fallow.
As it suggests, the fundamental reason for this reclamation and improvement of the peat moors is to increase the “subsistence of the
People”, a “necessity” which the author claims is “universally felt” by
his contemporaries.
23 It was certainly felt by the famous English
agronomist, Arthur Young, who, writing thirty years earlier, deplored
the uncultivated state of the lands bordering the canal cut through
Trafford Moss. He writes: “It is a great pity that the noble advantage
of a water-carriage through the heart of this moor to so fine a market
as Manchester, does not induce the owners to cultivate this waste
track, which might beyond all doubt be applied to numerous uses, far
more profitable than yielding peat in a country so abounding in
coals”.
24
We will consider later the major practical considerations driving wetland reclamation in late eighteenth-century France and England, but first it is important to explore the Enlightenment principles
underpinning this process of land reform. The formation of the larger
marshlands in Western Europe was generally attributed to the action
of the sea. Buffon claims that a prehistoric isthmus or land-bridge
___________________________
20 “Agricola”, “An account of the mode and expence [sic] of cultivating moss and
peatlands”, Edinburgh Advertiser, 2 May 1800, pp. 2-9 (p. 2).
21 “Agricola”, “An account of the mode…”, pp. 4-7.
22 “Agricola”, “An account of the mode…”, p. 8.
23 “Agricola”, “An account of the mode…”, p. 2.
24 Arthur Young, A Six Months tour through the North of England, 2
nd ed., 4 vols
(London: 1770-71), III, pp. 218-19.
80
ridgemuir, Ayrshire, winner of a Highland Society Gold Medal for
“his extensive improvement of a large tract of Moss on his property”.
20 In brief, the procedure involves cutting out master drains,
eight feet wide by four feet deep, tapering to two and a half feet deep
at their extremity; marking out ridges in the top soil and cutting them
in one-foot-wide strips; turning them with “a gentle declivity” towards
furrows, before dressing them with lime, and later dung. The dung is
carried onto the moorlands by a single-horse cart along a drained and
gravelled track which is also used for removing crops later from the
reclaimed land.
21 Oats are suggested as a potential first crop; but in
practice the Ayrshire farmer prefers potatoes.
22 This exemplary text
follows the two key strictures of the “improvers” of marshes and fens:
it reclaims “waste and barren grounds” and cultivates them with innovative crop rotation doing away with the need for land to lie fallow.
As it suggests, the fundamental reason for this reclamation and improvement of the peat moors is to increase the “subsistence of the
People”, a “necessity” which the author claims is “universally felt” by
his contemporaries.
23 It was certainly felt by the famous English
agronomist, Arthur Young, who, writing thirty years earlier, deplored
the uncultivated state of the lands bordering the canal cut through
Trafford Moss. He writes: “It is a great pity that the noble advantage
of a water-carriage through the heart of this moor to so fine a market
as Manchester, does not induce the owners to cultivate this waste
track, which might beyond all doubt be applied to numerous uses, far
more profitable than yielding peat in a country so abounding in
coals”.
24
We will consider later the major practical considerations driving wetland reclamation in late eighteenth-century France and England, but first it is important to explore the Enlightenment principles
underpinning this process of land reform. The formation of the larger
marshlands in Western Europe was generally attributed to the action
of the sea. Buffon claims that a prehistoric isthmus or land-bridge
___________________________
20 “Agricola”, “An account of the mode and expence [sic] of cultivating moss and
peatlands”, Edinburgh Advertiser, 2 May 1800, pp. 2-9 (p. 2).
21 “Agricola”, “An account of the mode…”, pp. 4-7.
22 “Agricola”, “An account of the mode…”, p. 8.
23 “Agricola”, “An account of the mode…”, p. 2.
24 Arthur Young, A Six Months tour through the North of England, 2
nd ed., 4 vols
(London: 1770-71), III, pp. 218-19.