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employed in devising the means of giving plenty and felicity to nations. The writings of historians and poets are filled with the actions of men, who under the influenee of insatiable lust of dominion, have wasted cities and provinees, and have defaeed the finest monuments of human genius and industry, while the benifieient enterprizes and efforts of those persons are negleeted or forgotten, who invented the instruments of agrieulture—who selected or imported into their country the seeds or plants most worthy of cultivation, or who drained morasses, gave fertility to barren wastes, and pointed out the best modes of preserving and augmenting the value of the produetions of the soil. Mankind suffered severely from their absurd admiration of successful ambition, and the applause whieh they bestow on it, tempting thereby restless individuals, in every age, to lay schemes for our destruetion, and to glory in the extent of the mischief which they produce. It seems to be the duty of men of letters, as friends of humanity, to endeavour in the destribution of renown, to eall from obseurity, those persons, however humble their stations may have been, who have sueeesfully laboured in promoting the substantial prosperity of their country. Among the number, none is more deserving of this service than Barbara Gilmour, whose good sense and industry first produced in Ayrshire what is now eelebrated through all Seotland by the name of Dunlop Cheese.
Barbara had gone to Ireland to avoid the religious perseeution which was eondueted with sueh atroeity in the West of Seotland, under the last prinees of the House of Stuart. Having returned after the revolution, and beeome the wife of a farmer in the parish of Dunlop, she introdueed the manufaeture of cheese, which sinee that period, has been the great business of this part of Ayrshire, and has been the means of covering the country with a number of industrious, happy, and prosperous small farmers. Our fathers, sensible that the elimate and soil were better adapted for pasturage than cropping, turned their attention to this species of farming. They improved their breed of cattle, enclosed their lands, and
