Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

96 HIGHLAND PASTUKAGE.
to their tenantry, that kindness, protection, or advice,
which they are asserted to have done in the former days
of clanship and independence, other consequences than
the g-runting of pigs and the smoking of bacon are likely
to follow.
From what I have witnessed in Orkney, and in hands
that knew full well how to calculate agricultural returnSyl
am inclined to think that, in many of the Western Islands,
the cultivation of rabbits might be advantageous. Small
islands form the most convenient and secure warrens;
and, in many such cases, these animals would occupy the
pastures more advantageously and completely than either
cattle or sheep ; while the labour and risk of transport
twice a year would be saved. Such is the case, in parti-
cular, with the remoter small islands ; such as the
Flannan, where the sheep scarcely pay the expense of
carriage, North Barra, which, from its distance, is quite
unoccupied, and innumerable islands about all the coasts,
so small as not to be worth occupying, even by sheep.
It is an additional convenience with respect to rabbits in
such places, that they feed readily on sea weed, and are
little affected by v/et and stormy weather, which is so in-
jurious to sheep ; as they can make shelter for them-
selves. While the peltry of this produce is of easy
transport and in steady demand, the carcases would
form no unsatisfactory addition to the miserable catalogue
of a Highland tenant's food. But what can be expected
from these poor creatures, when their betters are content
to go on in the old way ; little anxious to increase their
comforts, and, after they have made one or two of those
great efforts to improvement which are almost forced on
them by the progress of the country, unwilling to be at
the trouble of thinking again on the subject, or of striv-
ing to improve upon improvement.