were by chance made available from an unexpected source, and devoted to the purposes of technical and secondary education. Parliament had introduced a measure of public-house reform along with a scheme for compensating such houses as lost their licence. This feature was so stoutly opposed that the bill did not pass, although the chancellor of the exchequer had provided the necessary funds. Government proposed to distribute this money among local authorities and expend the balance in relief rates, but a clause was inserted in this bill giving burgh and county councils the option of spending the balance on technical education as well as in relief of rates. Advantage was largely taken of this power, and the grant came to be succinctly described as the “Residue” grant (£97,000 a year). The Department established in each county a body known as the secondary education committee, chosen by the county council and the chairmen of the school boards, which is charged with the expenditure of its share of the grant. The committee exists also in a few of the largest burghs, the members being in this case appointed by the town council, school board, and sometimes the trustees of educational endowments. In virtue of a Continuation Class code, technical and specialized education is given in day and, chiefly, evening classes in various centres, the principal being the Heriot-Watt College, Edinburgh; the Edinburgh and East of Scotland College of Agriculture; the Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College; the Glasgow School of Art; the Glasgow Athenaeum Commercial College; the West of Scotland Agricultural College; the Dundee Technical Institute; Gray's School of Art, Aberdeen; the Edinburgh Royal Institution School of Art, and the Edinburgh School of Applied Art; but well-equipped classes are held in most of the large towns, and several county councils maintain organizers of technical instruction. As regards agricultural education, the county is found to be in most cases too small an area for efficient organization, and consequently several counties combine to support, for instance, the East of Scotland Agricultural College—a corporation consisting of the agricultural department in the University, the Heriot-Watt College and the Veterinary College in Edinburgh,—the West of Scotland Agricultural College, Glasgow, and the agricultural department in Aberdeen University. The leading public schools on the English model are Trinity College, Glenalmond, Perthshire; Loretto School, Musselburgh, and Fettes College, Merchiston Castle and the Academy in Edinburgh. (c) Universities and Colleges.—There are four universities in Scotland, namely (in the order of foundation), St Andrews (1411), Glasgow (1450), Aberdeen (1494) and Edinburgh (1582), in which are the customary faculties of arts, divinity, law, medicine and science. In 1901 Mr Andrew Carnegie gave £2,000,000 to the universities. The administration of the fund was handed over to a body of trustees, who devote the annual income (£100,000) partly to the payment of students' fees and partly to buildings, apparatus, professorships and research. The court of each university is the supreme authority in regard to finance, discipline, and the regulation of the duties of professors and lecturers. The universities are empowered to affiliate other academical institutions, and women students are admitted on an equal footing with men. Under the act of 1899 the University College of Dundee was incorporated with St Andrews University, and Queen Margaret College became a part of the university of Glasgow, the buildings and endowments, used for women students exclusively, being handed over to the University Court. St Mungo's College, Glasgow, incorporated in 1889 under a Board of Trade licence, has medicinal and law faculties, and Anderson's College Medical School, Glasgow, was instituted in 1887. These are on the same basis as the extra-mural medical schools in Edinburgh, their medical curricula qualifying for licence only and not for Scottish university degrees. The United Free Church maintains colleges at Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow, and there is a Roman Catholic college at Blairs near Aberdeen, besides a monastery and college at Fort Augustus. The Church of Scotland and the United Free Church each possess their training colleges for teachers, the Episcopal Church supports one and the Roman Catholic Church one. The Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art has been transferred to the Scottish Education Department.
Agriculture.—Though Scotland is a country of great estates, this circumstance possesses less significance from the agricultural than from the historical standpoint. The excessive size of the properties may to some extent be accounted for by the fact that most of the surface is so mountainous and unproductive as to be unsuitable for division into smaller estates, but two other causes have also co-operated, namely, first, the wide territorial authority of such Lowland families as the Scotts and Douglases, and such Highland clans as the Campbells of Argyll and Breadalbane, and the Murrays of Athol and the duke of Sutherland; and secondly, the stricter law of entail introduced in 1685. Thus the largest estates remain in the hands of the old hereditary families. The almost absolute power formerly wielded by the landlords, who within their own territories were lords of regality, hindered independent agricultural enterprise, and it was not till after the abolition of hereditable jurisdictions in 1748 that agriculture made real progress. The Society of Improvers in the Knowledge of Agriculture, founded in 1723, ceased to exist after the rebellion of 1745, and the introduction of new and improved methods, where not the result of private energy and sagacity, was chiefly due to the Highland and Agricultural Society, established in 1784. Further stimulus was also supplied by the high prices that obtained during the Napoleonic wars, and, in spite of periods of severe depression since then, the science of agriculture has continued to advance. The system of nineteen years' leases had proved distinctly superior to the system of yearly tenancy so general in England, although prejudicially affected by customs and conditions which, for a considerable time, seriously strained the relations between landlord and tenant. But the abolition of the law of hypothec in 1879—under which the landlord had a lien for rent upon the produce of the land, the cattle and sheep fed on it, and the live stock and implements used in husbandry—the Ground Game Act of 1880, the several Agricultural Holdings Acts, and the construction of light railways improved matters and established a better understanding. The period of general depression which set in before 1885 was surmounted in Scotland with comparatively little trouble. A large amount of capital was lost by tenants, and a few farms were thrown here and there upon the landlords hands, but in no district was rent extinguished or were holdings abandoned. The sub-commissioners who reported to the Royal Commission on Agriculture in 1895 found nearly everywhere a demand, sometimes competition for farms, persisting throughout the crisis. In Banff, Nairn, Elgin and several southern counties rent reductions varied from 25 to 30%. In Perth, Fife, Forfar and Aberdeen the average was 30%; but in nearly all the counties, towards the end at least of the period of depression, the coexistent demand and competition for farms were observable. In some districts in the west rents fell very little; in others, especially sheep-farming districts, the fall was very severe. In Ayrshire the figure varied from 5 to 20%; for Dumfriesshire 16% was given as a fair average, but here too the distressed farmer was compelled to admit that if he gave up his holding there were others ready to take it. Afterwards, owing to the increased attention given to stock-fattening and dairying, and to a rise in prices, farming reached a condition of equilibrium, and the most noticeable residuum of the period of depression was the large intrusion of the butcher and grazier class into the farmer class proper. Caithness-shire was declared to be the greatest sufferer by the period of depression; rents fell in that county by 30 to 50% on large farms, 20 to 30% on medium, and 10 to 60% on small farms. Nevertheless, the decline in the value of land was serious. According to the reports of the Inland Revenue Commissioners, the gross income derived from the ownership of lands in Scotland was returned in 1879-1880 at £7,769,303. After that year a continuous fall set in, and in 1901-1902 the amount returned was only £5,911,836, a drop in twenty-five years of £1,857,467. These figures refer to land, whether cultivated or not, including ornamental grounds, gardens attached to houses when exceeding one acre in extent,
