"'An I a stubb'd Thurnaby waäste. Dobbut looök at the waäste, theer warnt no feeäd for a cow, Nowt at all but bracken an fuzz, an looök at it now. Warnt worth nowt a haäcre and now there's lots o feeäd, Four scoor yows upon it an some on it down i seeäd." Even in his days, the good farmer was following King Alfred's directions. About 1830-1850 most of the land was in good bearing, and the roads were sufficiently good to admit of the stage-coach with four horses. But they after all lasted but a very short time before the railways again entirely altered the conditions of country life. As we have seen, rents were in places, five times as large in 1820-1830 as they had ever been previously.[73] Therefore it was that about this time the gentlemen's houses were in many places rebuilt on a more magnificent scale. Then also were begun those circles and strips, or belts of plantation, which are now conspicuous features of the Scotch lowlands. An enormous majority of these plantations are not more than eighty years old. I think avenues were planted in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The fashion about 1820 was to destroy them as unnatural, at least in England. Unfortunately no respect was paid to the economic practice of forestry, with very unfortunate results for the proprietor. [73] The agricultural rents in Dumfriesshire were valued in 1656 at £13,225, in 1790-1800 as £109,700, in 1808 £219,037 10s. 8d. In 1905 the value per acre was from £1 to £2. The rest of this chapter is necessarily unpleasant and distressing reading, but it is necessary if we are to understand the romance of the fields. As one wanders over the grassy pastures of Southern Scotland, where the black-faced sheep foolishly start away, and where one's ears are irritated by the scolding complaints of the curlew or whaup, it is no rare accident to find a few broken-down walls, a clump of nettles, and badly grown ash trees. That was once a farm steading, where a healthy troop of children used to play together after walking three or more miles barefoot to school. The ash trees were planted at every farm "toon," for the Scottish spear was a very necessary weapon until recent times. Often also, upon some monotonous grouse moor, one sees the ridges that betoken a little croft where a cottager lived. In one parish (Troqueer) over seventy country cottages have been abandoned during the lifetime of a middle-aged person.