Four miles west by north of Stranraer is situated Lochnaw Castle, the ancient seat of the Agnews, who were hereditary sheriffs of Galloway till 1747, when hereditable jurisdictions were abolished.
It is no discovery that this latter kind of variation is not hereditable, and it is not the fact that the small variations, to which Darwin attached great but not exclusive importance as the material upon which natural selection operates, are of this latter kind.
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.
But the hereditable jurisdictions and feudal powers, as of calling out tenants by the fiery cross and punishing the peaceful by burning their cottages, had never been abolished; the chief's will was law, and if the chiefs headed a rising, their clansmen would follow them, willingly or " forced out."
The abolition of hereditable jurisdictions and of the claims of feudal superiors to military service, after Culloden, broke the bond between chiefs and clans, and introduced new social and economical conditions, bequeathing the Land Question to the 10th century.