General Improvement. - Having thus slightly noticed the natural circumstances of the western counties of the Lowlands of Scotland, we shall next take a general view of what has been done by man in the way of improving or adapting for his use that which nature has set before him. The adaptation of a country to the purposes of man must always depend on the nature of that country, and on the degree of civilisation, and the amount of skill and capital, possessed by its inhabitants. The progress which the tract in question has made, since we passed through it in 1805, is no less gratifying than it is astonishing. Good lines of road are now formed where the roads were formerly hilly, circuitous, and always in bad order. Extensive tracts of country which in 1805 were open waste; for instance, about Lochmaben in Dumfriesshire, Castle Douglas in Kirkcudbright, and Galston in Ayrshire, are now enclosed, drained, sheltered by plantations, studded with farm-houses and cottages, and subjected to a regular rotation of crops. Many thousands of acres of rocky surface have been planted, and of the steep sides of hills where aration could not be practised; and, we think, we may safely state, that, for every ten acres of plantation which existed in 1805, there are a thousand in 1831. Almost all the farm-houses and farm-yards of the country have been renewed since the former period, and these now present a most regular and comfortable appearance. A great many of the labourers' cottages have also been rebuilt in a more substantial style, though not, as we shall hereafter show, with that attention to the comfort, decency, and cleanliness of the inhabitants which has taken place in farm-houses.
