avery. Indeed, very few of them, in the course
of ages, are capable of conceiving any other means of maintaining the
ostentatious state, the luxurious and indolent pride, which they mistake
for greatness. I heartily wish that this observation and censure may
not, in some instances, be applicable to great landed proprietors in
some parts of Britain."--Travelling Memorandums, vol. i. p. 123. 1792.

[24] The exciting effects of a poor soil, or climate, or of severe
usage, on the productive powers of various vegetable species, have been
long and often remarked. Flavel describes, in one of his ingenious
emblems, illustrative of the influence of affliction on the Christian,
an orchard tree, which had been beaten with sticks and stones, till it
presented a sorely stunted and mutilated appearance; but which, while
the fairer and more vigorous trees around it were rich in only leaves,
was laden with fruit,--a direct consequence, it is shown, of the hard
treatment to which it had been subjected. I have heard it told in a
northern village, as a curious anecdote, that a large pear tree, which
during a vigorous existence of nearly fifty years, had borne scarce a
single pear, had, when in a state of decay, and for a few years previous
to its death, borne immense crops of from two to three bolls each
season. And the skilful gardener not unfrequently avails himself of the
principle on which both phenomena seem to have occurred,--that exhibited
in the beaten and that in the decaying tree,--in rendering his barren
plants fruitful. He has recourse to it even when merely desirous of
ascertaining the variety of pear or apple which some thriving sapling,
slow in bearing, is yet to produce. Selecting some bough which may be
conveniently lopped away without destroying the symmetry of the tree, he
draws his knife across the bark, and inflicts on it a wound, from which,
though death may not ensue for some two or three twelvemonths, it cannot
ultimately recover. Next spring the wounded branch is found to bear its
bunches of blossoms; the blossoms set into fruit; and while in the other
portions of the plant all is vigorous and barren as before, the dying
part of it, as if sobered by the near prospect of dissolution, is found
fulfilling the proper end of its existence. Soil and climate, too,
exert, it has been often remarked, a similar influence. In the united
parishes of Kirkmichael and Culicuden, in the immediate neighborhood of
Cromarty, much of