This idea has now, however, completely vanished, and many Shetland proprietors have let their lands at a raised money rent, without reserving any further claim upon the tenants: and if all have not done so, it arises from other causes, and not from any feeling of the kind described above, or from any inclination to take undue advantages. As to your question why the scattholds remain undivided, the general backwardness of improvement, and want of agricultural skill and capital, are the immediate causes. The present tenantry are so ignorant of the means of turning these commons to any proper account, that the fee-simple of most of them would, under the present management, hardly pay a common land-measurer for surveying them, far less could they bear any litigation. There are, however, many considerable scattholds at present the exclusive property of one or a few persons. Improved management has begun, and will probably take root, first in such situations, and afterwards, when its advantages are seen, and a sufficient number of people trained to practise it has arisen, it will spread over those lands where the difficulty and expense of divisions have to be previously incurred. Your alternative of levying a rent of so much per head of beasts pasturing, would not answer, because, as I have already endeavoured to explain, the tenants, in paying a rent per merk, pay for their scattholds as well as for their other ]and. Your other suggestion, however, numerically limiting the stock according to the rent, or, which is the same thing, according to the moths, would be highly beneficial both to tenants and landlords. If you ask, Why then is it not carried into effect? I can only answer that we have not long turned our attention the way of agricultural improvement, and have only begun to discover that what is difficult is not always impossible.