NOTES ON IRISH NATURAL HISTORY. 17 



as I marched over the hills, and waken the echoes of the 

 Twelve Pins with their piercing whistle. The curlews were 

 evidently at enmity with the hawks, for sometimes two or 

 three would follow a hawk, and attempt to stun him with their 

 whistle ; when they approached too near, the hawk would 

 turn up his round face as if to take a survey, and then look 

 down again, as if quite satisfied he had nothing to fear, and 

 with noiseless wing beat the bog as regularly as a well-train- 

 ed pointer. During the day I saw many of these hawks, but 

 not one that I supposed to be the female of the same species. 

 In the afternoon the clouds came down so low as to hide all 

 the hills by whose forms I had endeavoured to steer, and I 

 was not sorry to see something like a road winding round the 

 shore of a beautifully wooded lake. This lake, I afterwards 

 learned, was Garromin, and the beautiful woods the property 

 of a Mr. Mahon, the residence being called Glendalough. — 

 Just beyond the lake is a cottage called the Recess, and a few 

 cultivated fields, one of w^hich was completely purple with 

 the blossoms of Vicia Cracca. The grass was intended for 

 mowing, and was not yet cut ; I think it would have averaged 

 three feet in height, and was very close together ; the crop 

 must have been enormous. There was a patch of oats that 

 must have been nearly five feet high. From what T learned 

 at Roundstone, I believe the land might be taken at sixpence 

 or eightpence an acre unbroken, and where partially re- 

 claimed, for 2s. or 2s. 6d. The plan is, " to set a plot of 

 ground to a man," that is, to let him have a tract marked out 

 from point to point, but not measured, and for this he is to pay 

 an annual sum. I saw, above Roundstone, plots of about 

 forty English acres, as nearly as I could guess, set at £2 a- 

 year. But between Urrisbeg and the sea, is a wonderfully 

 rich and populous tract, which is let in small pieces, and at 

 a higher rate. I was told that in the immediate vicinity of 

 Roundstone, under Urrisbeg, is a population of nine or ten 

 thousand people ; and I was quite willing to credit it, for [ 

 could have counted near upon a thousand cabins, and ten in- 

 mates to a cabin is by no means an extraordinary number. — 

 But this is going back. From " the Recess " I walked stea- 

 dily along the road, in hopes of finding a place to stop at for 

 the night, but the bog seemed to stretch out before me, and I 

 began to anathematize the Irish miles. I felt a twinging in 

 the shin-bone, which had annoyed me for seven or eight days, 

 get so much worse that I could scarcely step with that leg 

 without crying out. I had walked ten hours a-day, which 

 would be thirty English miles, ever since I broke my shin in 

 crossing Achill Sound, and it had day by day grown more 

 Vol. iV.— No. 37, x. s. d 



