James McDonald, writing in 1811 a later report on the Agriculture of the Hebrides, published in 1811, gives an account of the beginning of the disappearance of run-rig in those islands. “Mr. Maclean of Coll insisted upon some of his tenants dividing among them the land which they formerly held in common, or run-rig, and which they were accustomed for ages to divide annually by lot, for the purposes of cultivation. They obeyed with great reluctance, and each tenant had his own farm to himself. Three or four years’ experience has convinced them now that their landlord acted wisely.... The same thing happened on various other estates, and especially in Mull, Tyree and Skye” (p. 133). But the general disappearance of run-rig in these islands took place about the middle of the nineteenth century, and was the consequence of the temporary prosperity produced by the rise of the kelp industry. This led to extreme subdivision of holdings by sub-letting, the body of small crofters so created relying in the main upon the kelp industry for a livelihood, and using their crofts as a subsidiary means of subsistence (Skene, “Celtic Scotland,” Vol. III., ch. x.). It is clear that the two essential features of run-rig are (1) that it is based upon co-aration, several farmers yoking their horses to one plough, and tilling the land in partnership; just as the English common-field system was also based upon co-aration, with the difference that in England, in general, at the time that co-aration was practised, the plough was generally drawn by eight oxen instead of by four horses. (2) That run-rig has a special distinctive feature in the periodical division and re-division of the land, and that in the Hebrides, at least, this feature survived after co-aration had become obsolete.[89] In this respect the Scotch agricultural community resembles that of Great Russia, where also the periodical re-division of the open fields, so as to make the shares proportional to the working power of each family, persists after co-aration has disappeared. [89] Mr. A. N. Palmer, in his important work, “A History of Ancient Tenures of Land in the Marches of N. Wales,” expresses the opinion that co-aration and the shifting of land disappeared simultaneously in North Wales, and had come to an end by the reign of Henry VI. (p. 36, note). That throughout the British Isles, and indeed throughout Northern Europe, the earliest tillage of the soil by ploughs was accomplished by the method of co-aration, scarcely admits of doubt; nor is it easy to doubt that before the possibility of improving the crop by manure was discovered, there was no permanent occupation by one of the partners in the ploughing, of any particular set of strips so ploughed.