As the century advanced, however, closer intercourse with England roused ambitious landlords to attempt improvements. Trees were planted on the hillsides and about the naked houses; the ‘infields’ were levelled and enclosed. Yet nine-tenths of the fences in Ayrshire were not built until after 1766, and as late as 1800 two-thirds of Fife was still fenceless. Rotation of crops, better cultivation, artificial grasses, more productive types of grain, were all experimented with. Potatoes and turnips, regarded as garden luxuries in the early part of the century, began to be grown on a large scale for human food and stock feed respectively. John Wesley in 1780 noted that vegetables had become as plentiful in Scotland as in England, though on his first visit, in 1762, he had found none at all, even on noblemen’s tables. Carts were introduced for farm work, to take the place of the ‘creels’ or panniers, in which manure had formerly been borne on horseback to the fields, and of the rough sledges on which the sheaves had been hauled from harvest field to stackyard. The wide use of carts, however, had in many districts to await the improvement of the roads; in some instances, when landlords first offered wheeled vehicles as gifts to their tenants, they were refused because it seemed impossible to drag them through the mud. Some few of the improving landlords were actuated by disinterested zeal to better living-conditions; their stubborn and superstitious peasants were helped against their will. Many more landlords were motivated by simple greed to improve their rent-rolls. By breaking up small holdings occupied on short-term leases, and throwing several together, they made more profitable farms which were rented for long terms. The consequent evictions, however, produced an over-supply of would-be tenants whose desperate need for land resulted in competitive bidding from those willing to take a gambling chance on getting from the soil more than it really had to give. If they succeeded, it was too often at the expense of the health and strength of themselves, their children, and their servants.