248 THE IRISH FOREST PROBLEM. [Aug. 



far this is needed has heen well shown by "J. C." in the Tlie Irish 

 Farm, Forest, and Garden. He writes : " The ignorance that prevails 

 is among the farmers, who have, as a rule, shown no disposition to 

 plant for shelter, and the consequence is that the land is depreciat- 

 ing in value every year. I myself have known an instance (in the 

 county Cork, too) where a landlord offered most suitable trees gratis 

 to tenants on mountain farms, but not one of them availed them- 

 selves of the offer, though their land would have been doubled in 

 value by planting their raised fences with trees. These were no 

 uncertain holdings either. They enjoyed leases of thirty years, and 

 were sure of renewals safer and longer than the Land Act affords. 

 But trees are really so cheap, and the planting so easily and 

 expeditiously done — at a time, too, when other farm work is not 

 pressing — that there is no excuse for the farmer not entering at 

 once upon a system of planting for the shelter of his stock. If 

 such were generally adopted, we would be largely independent 

 of the re-afforesting scheme, necessary and desirable as it is. There 

 are no large forests in Meath to affect its climate, and yet remove 

 the large hedgerows and hedgerow timber that so shelter the land, 

 and it will soon lose its high reputation as a fattening county. 

 There is no reason why the tenant farmer should not adopt this 

 simple and inexpensive form of planting. He has full security for 

 his outlay now — indeed he had such by registering his trees, even 

 before the Land Act — and he will have the satisfaction of knowing 

 that he will thus become a real benefactor to his country, whilst 

 largely benefiting himself, by ' causing two blades of good grass to 

 grow where but one bad blade grew before.' " 



The operations of the Belleek Parish Association, county Fer- 

 managh, instituted by Mr. J. C. Bloomfield, for the cultivation of 

 osiers, and their manufacture into baskets, may, we hope, be but 

 the first of many such local organizations. On visiting a basket- 

 making district in England, Mr. Bloomfield found that the profits 

 of this rough industry were sometimes estimated at £40 per acre. 



Many railway companies have adopted a system of making 

 the baskets used for the conveyance of perishable produce and of 

 letting them out on hire ; but while all such baskets are made in 

 England, the rods used in them are imported from Holland. Pro- 

 curing a pattern basket, Mr. Bloomfield employed a local creel- 

 maker, who copied it in such a manner as to elicit from the manager 

 of the London and North-Western Ptailway Company a declaration 

 that a week's instruction would suffice to enable the man employed 

 to produce as good a basket as any they had in store. 



In order to develop this industry, a school is to be established in a 

 large rough shed for the instruction of adults and youths in basket- 



