Scotland_ is their
work. Through this association they have professedly attached chemistry
and geology and physiology to the car of practical agriculture; and under
the guidance of these sciences, the art of culture will not long lag
behind her sister arts, for which these sciences have already done so
much. We have before us a list of the members of this patriotic
association. In this list we find the names of nearly every man in
Scotland who is at all known to agricultural fame. If there be a few whose
names we miss, the reason probably is, that they hardly yet know much of
its existence; for it has only just finished its first year of active
life. The new list of another year will contain the names of all who are
really alive to the wants and capabilities of our national agriculture.

We are sincerely desirous for the credit and advancement of Scottish
agriculture. We are, therefore, anxious that no means should be left
untried to keep up the perhaps artificially high character which the
natural intelligence and shrewdness of the Scottish nation has gained for
the practical farmers of the country. Granting, what we have ourselves
seen, that there is much good farming and well-farmed land to the north of
the Tweed, we cannot deny there is also much neglected land and much
unskilful tillage. Though much has been improved in this end of the
island, there is far more still almost in a state of nature. Hitherto the
high-roads of the country have gone through such pleasant places as lie
between the Pease bridge and Edinburgh; but the railroads now projected
will lay open the waste and neglected tracts of country to southern eyes,
and the agricultural reputation of Scotland may suffer a rude shock in
English estimation. We are not the less good patriots while we agree with
Mr Stephens, that there is a greater breadth of skilfully farmed land in
England than in Scotland, and that the germ of all, or nearly all, our
improvements, has been drawn from the South. Give England her due, and
Scotland has still much to be proud of in picking up a germ here and a
germ there, and unfolding and developing these germs under her own colder
sky, and, almost against nature, conquering for herself fruitful fields
and a high agricultural reputation.

But England and Ireland having awoke to new exertions in improving their
soil, we in the North must open our eyes too. We must, if possible, keep
the name we have acquired. If our practice is fa