25YEARS AGO THE island of Shona, at the mouth of Loch Moidart, will be put on the market this weekwith a price tag in excess of GBP500,000. The 1300-acre island, which provided the inspiration for J M Barrie's play Mary Rose, about an enchanted island, is being sold by Mr Eric "Digby" Vane, who has lived on the island with his family for the past 20 years. Eilean Shona - the Happy Isle - lies just a mile from the scene of one of the most momentous events in Scottish history when Bonnie Prince Charlie landed from France. The new owner would receive an 11-room mansion house and f lat, 12 cottages, a red deer herd, a commercial oyster farm, a pine tree plantation, a farming enterprise and salmon netting.

50 YEARS AGO FARM rents were not related to present-day costs of estate management, stated the Marquis of Tweeddale when he addressed the annual meeting of the Scottish Landowners' Federation in Edinburgh. He said the basic solution to the problem of increasing fixed investment in agriculture was to raise rents to an economic level. Since 1940, rents had risen by 15per cent, while general prices had gone up by 300per cent350per cent. The landlord was getting little or no return for his assets.

100 YEARS AGO IN PARLIAMENT, Mr Eugene Wason said he wished to confine himself principally to the way in which the prohibition of drift-net fishing had affected the salmon fishings on the Forth between Alloa and Culross. The burgh of Stirling wished the prohibition to continue because it thought more salmon would come up to it, but Culross strongly supported the motion. In Alloa, before prohibition, 30 boats were using this method of fishing.

150 YEARS AGO THE arrangements for the transfer of stock from different parts of Scotland to the French Agricultural Exhibition in Paris are now complete. Three trains will leave Scotland for the south, proceeding to Lowestoft, where the stock is to be embarked for France. The entries are numerous, and attendants will number about 110.

200 YEARS AGO GENERAL Joseph Campbell was ordered by the government to be added to the committee appointed to investigate the accounts of Scottish forfeited estates.