croftam Magistri Jacobi burnett ex australi et croftam dicti Joannis ex boreali."

On 29th November, 1585, two years later, a charter is given to Robert Chalmer by the Provost, Baillies, and Council of the Poynerneuk and two adjacent crofts :-"Solas et integras croftas terre cum pertenentiis subscriptis vulgo appellat the Sow Croft Hill Croft and Poynerneuk olim dictis fratribus carmelitarum incumben contigue adjacentes."

A notarial instrument is still wanted, however, to legally connect the pynours with the Neuk. In default of it we are thrown back on our conjectural powers. It is pretty certain that the pynours were not possessed of landed property, or indeed any property at so early a date. As the spot of ground in question was known by their name, it may, however, have been rented by them as an agricultural croft to be worked in their spare time, and if held for a long series of years, as it may well have been, have become at last associated with their name. I would venture another conjecture, that as the river in olden times made a distinct bend there, forming a kind of cove, and as the lands there were all more or less likely to be submerged in times of flood and high tides, the locality may have been a sort of rendezvous for the craft-a haven for any boats or utensils held and employed by them in the conduct of their business. However it has been, there must have existed some visible connection at one time. It is gratifying to see that the name is likely to be perpetuated in the name of one of the new roads on the reclaimed ground, in the near neighbourhood of the old Pynour's Croft.

At the Riding of the Town's Marches it is customary to have a well-mounted "Warkman" lead the procession bearing aloft the City Banner.

February 9, 1886,-JOHN MILLER, President, in the Chair.

A. W. ROBERTSON, M. A., Public Librarian, read a paper on "The Art of describing Books and some of its difficulties."

The following is Mr. ROBERTSON's Abstract of his paper :

TO DESCRIBE a book correctly has been said to be one of the most difficult things a man can set himself to do. In any view of the matter it is, in present circumstances, of the utmost consequence that a collection of books should be so described as that every member of it shall reveal its purpose and use, so far as it has one, and every reader shall be able with the least possible delay and trouble to lay hands on the particular purpose. To this end it is not necessary to pay much heed to the minute features of books, more or less external in their nature, which constitute so much of the book-lover's interest -even though these are often bound up with a genuine and intelligent interest in matters literary and intellectual, and the outcome is often a substantial gain to desirable knowledge.

Points of more general and practical interest connected with bookdescribing are, the size, for which an approximately definite standard is desirable, the date and place of publication, and especially the relation of titles to the subject matter. Various forms of errors have to be carefully guarded against.

More particularly there are the errors arising from the changes made in the titles of books, and the liability of confounding two or more authors. The misapprehension of the scope and character of a book from some mistake of the title is also a fruitful source of error. The large class of works written under pseudonyms, or anonymously, present peculiar difficulties of their own. Finally, after all these and similar difficulties have been cleared away, there remains the crucial question-What is the relation of any particular book to other books of the same class and to all knowledge? In other words-How are all the books in a collection to be arranged in a catalogue so that readers of varied capacities and requirements may be able, speedily, and with some degree of certainty, to ascertain all that it contains on any particular subject or class of subjects?

March 20, 1888.-Mr. JAMES MOIR, M.A., in the Chair.

WILLIAM ALEXANDER, LL.D., read a paper entitled, "The Making of Aberdeenshire."

The Making of Aberdeenshire.

By WILLIAM ALEXANDER, LL.D.

THE subject upon which it is my purpose to offer a few discursive remarks seems to me one of very considerable general interest at any time; and at present, when questions affecting the welfare of that part of the population who make their living directly off the land claim a large share of public attention, that interest must naturally be deepened. By the making of Aberdeenshire is meant the development of its agriculture, and the related social progress of its inhabitants; the conversion of the county from a bleak, comparatively treeless, wholly roadless region, abundantly dotted with undrained swamps and dominating stretches of heather and stony waste, to one of the most skilfully cultivated counties of Scotland, and certainly the best for cattle-rearing. The period of time to which I shall have occasion to refer extends over about a century and a-half. The history of agriculture, and of social progress generally, in Scotland, is an extremely interesting one, had we time to dwell upon it with anything like adequate fulness. Going back to the thirteenth century, we should find a long period of peaceful progress, during which the tillers of the soil seem to have lived happily and contentedly, while the tide of civilisation continued to flow steadily northward. With the death of Alexander III., "the peaceable king," in 1286, this state of matters came to an end, and "the prosperity of Scotland suffered a long eclipse." The dire struggle which closed its first scene on the field of Bannockburn had commenced; and the termination of that struggle was followed by the departure of the great Anglo-Norman lords, who, holding vast possessions in both countries, had long maintained benorth the Border an example of English wealth and refinement that, in the eyes of the common people, contrasted strongly with anything they had been accustomed to see. It has

been said, and not untruly, that "Scotland, at the death of King Alexander III., was more civilised and more prosperous than at any period of her existence down to the time when she ceased to be a separate kingdom in 1707." And it is certainly rather remarkable to find it on record that the estimated number of sheep in Scotland in the reigns of Robert I. and Robert II. was equal to half the estimated number so late as 1814 even. Thus far of the events leading up to the War of Independence and of the consequences, in a material sense, of that great struggle. Whether, had no such struggle become necessary, the tide of a higher civilisation, bringing with it increased industrial enterprise and greater material prosperity, would have been earlier felt thus far north we need not speculate ; we only know that at the commencement of the eighteenth century the state of agriculture in Aberdeenshire was about as wretched as it well could be; that the tenants were poor and inefficient cultivators, destitute of means, and equally destitute of a desire to adopt improved modes of husbandry.

In describing the general state of rural occupation in Scotland at an early date, Mr. Cosmo Innes* brings a heavy charge against "the lawyers" of systematically lending their services to aid the barons of old in depriving poor tenants of their grazing grounds, and, without justification, bringing those grounds within terms of the charters of those who claimed to be feudal superiors. He then says "The land held in common was of vast extent. In truth, the arable, the cultivated land of Scotland, the land early appropriated, and held by charter, is a narrow strip on the river bank, or beside the sea. The inland, the upland, the moor, the mountain, were really not occupied at all for agricultural purposes, or served only to keep the poor and their cattle from starving." And so late as 1702, an Englishman, Rev. Mr. Thomas Morer, minister of St. Ann's within Aldersgate, then chaplain to a Scotch regiment, speaks of the surface of the country in Scotland as "generally unenclosed."+ And in describ

*Lectures_on Scotch Legal Autiquities. By Cosmo Innes. Edmonston & Douglas, 1872.

Edinburgh :

+A Short Account of Scotland, being a Description of the Nature of that Kingdom, and what the Constitution of it is in Church and State. Wherein also some notice is taken of their Chief Cities and Royal Barghs, with an Appendix (I.) about their King's Supremacy; (II.) the difference of the Scotch and English Liturgy; (III.) the Revenue and Expenditure on the Civil and Military List, according to a late Establishment. Written by the late Rev. Mr. Thomas Morer, Minister of St. Ann's within Aldersgate, when he was Chaplain to a Scotch Regiment. London: Printed for John Morphew, near Stationers' Hall, 1715.

ing the best cultivated parts, he states that "the arable land ran in narrow slips, with stony wastes between, like the moraines of a glacier. The soil of the country," says Mr. Morer, "seems to the eye very indifferent; and though they have many fine valleys, which might be improved into a competitorship with our English meadows, yet for want of sufficient industry and care, they become almost useless, on the account of frequent bogs and waters in such places." Artificial drainage was practically unknown in those days; and it thus came to pass that cultivation was carried out exclusively upon lands that were naturally dry; and this, in turn, accounts for the fact that traces of old cultivation are in some instances to be found at altitudes so great as to puzzle the modern farmer. "The Highlanders," continues Mr. Morer, are not without considerable quantities of corn, yet have not enough to satisfy their numbers, and therefore yearly come down with their cattle, of which they have greater plenty, and so traffic with the lowlanders for such proportions of oats and barley as their families or necessities call for;" and he repeats that, for the supply of cattle, the lowlanders depended much on "the yearly descent of the Highlanders." Let us endeavour now to obtain an idea of the state of the county of Aberdeen, in its agricultural aspect, as it was at the beginning and up to fully the middle of the eighteenth century, noting, in the first place, its extent, generally, and in cultivated acreage.

In point of extent Aberdeenshire is the sixth largest county in Scotland. Its total area of land and water is 1,258,510 acres. Inverness-shire, including its island adjuncts, has an area considerably more than double that of Aberdeenshire. Argyllshire and the combined county of Ross and Cromarty each exceed two millions of acres in extent; Perthshire is larger than Aberdeenshire by more than a quarter of a million of acres, and Sutherlandshire by more than a hundred thousand acres. Thus far of total areas. When we come to the total acreage under crops, bare fallow, and grass, however, Aberdeenshire takes the first place by a long way amongst the counties named, and in all Scotland. The area so classified in the Agricultural Returns for 1887 was-In Aberdeenshire, 612,724 acres; in Perthshire, which comes second, 347,723 acres; Dumfries, Lanark, and Forfarshires are each somewhere about a third less than Perthshire; while Inverness-shire has 150,417 acres; Ross and Cromarty, 134,870 acres-not much over a fourth of the arable area of Aberdeenshire; Argyllshire, 128,258 acres; and Sutherlandshire,