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34 JOURNAL OF A TOUR IN SCOTLAND
slovenly ; the pasture is left wholly to nature ;
and here and there poor oats and poorer
barley, both over-run with weeds, are raised
in a climate most unfit for grain. It is
evident that this ought to be a pastoral
country, and that all the grain which is
wanted here should be brought from other
parts where it is cultivated with less un-
certainty. Did the people manage their
grass lands well, the stock of cattle might
be prodigiously increased. Turnips, potatoes
(which indeed they cultivate with care, and
it seems to be the only thing on which care
is bestowed), cabbage, and doubtless other
culinary herbs and roots, succeed here per-
fectly. The error is in relying upon the
cereal plants instead of these, which are less
precarious and more productive — upon flour
and oatmeal instead of potatoes, porridge,
and sour krout.
I saw no whins to-day ; much broom and
much juniper, either of them far more beautiful
than the whin when its golden season is
over, but during that season it is indeed the
glory of the wastes. No lichen geographicus :
plenty of bog myrtle — and the little star-
plant also. Heather, but not in abundance ;
this blossom when it predominates may well
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