below which, in the straths and glens, were their holdings and dwellings.  The ruins of cottages, or patches of green here and there where cottages stood, mark the sites of many little holdings from which the crofters and their families were turned out many years ago in order to make room for sheep-farms.  The proprietors sometimes recognized the rights of these native tenants, and gave them new holdings in exchange for the old ones.  The new crofts were often nearer the sea, where the land was less favorable for grazing and where the rights of common were less valuable, but the occupants had better opportunities for supplementing their incomes from the land by fishing and by gathering sea-weed for kelp, from which iodine was made.  There were, however, great numbers who were not supplied with new crofts, but turned away from their old homes and left to shift for themselves.  Some of these, too poor to go elsewhere, built rude huts wherever they could find a convenient spot, and thus increased the ranks of the squatters.  Others were allowed to share the already too small holdings of their more fortunate brethren, while others, again, found their way to the lowlands and cities of the south or to America.  The traditions of the hardships and sufferings endured by some of these evicted crofters are still kept alive in the prosperous homes of their children and grandchildren on this side of the Atlantic.  The process of clearing off the crofters went on for many years.  In 1849 Hugh Miller, in trying to arouse public sentiment against it, declared that, “while the law is banishing its tens for terms of seven and fourteen years,—­the penalty of deep-dyed crimes,—­irresponsible and infatuated power is banishing its thousands for no crime whatever.”

Lately, owing to foreign competition and the deterioration of the land that has been used for many years as sheep-pastures, sheep-farming has become much less profitable than formerly, and many large tenants have in consequence given up their farms.  The enthusiasm for deer-hunting has, however, increased with the increase of wealth and leisure among Englishmen, and immense tracts, amounting altogether to nearly two millions of acres, have been turned into deer-forests, yielding, as a rule, a slightly higher rent than was paid by the crofters and sheep-farmers.  Much of this land is either unfit for agricultural purposes or could not at present be cultivated with profit.  Some of it, however, is fertile, or well suited for grazing, and greatly coveted by the crofters.  The deer and other game often destroy or injure the crops of the adjoining holdings, and thus add to the troubles of the occupants and increase their indignation at the land’s being used to raise sheep and “vermin” instead of men.  Most Americans have had intimations of this feeling through the accounts of the hostility that has been shown to our countryman, Mr. Winans, whose deer-forest is said to cover two hundred square miles.  While evictions are much less common than