THE CHEMISTRY OF BOG RECLAMATION. 207 



tion we sowed with oats out of the lea, but the most satisfac- 

 tory crop \ve found to be rape and grasses mixed, for on the 

 best of the land they form at once an excellent permanent past- 

 ure. We have now had two crops from this land ; and I 

 venture to say that the thirteen stacks of oats and hay gathered 

 in in good condition, and the turnips and roots now growing, 

 which are not excelled in the county Galway except those of 

 Lord Clancarty at Ballinasloe, who has grown 110 tons of tur- 

 nips to the Irish acre, equal to upward of 68 tons to the acre here 

 present a picture most gratifying and cheering in every way. 



" The second farm of 240 acres, which adjoins this, had a 

 good building on it ; but, having been let on lease at about 

 10s. an acre to a large grazier whose stock-in-trade was a 

 horse, a saddle, and a pair of shears, had not been cultirated 

 or improved. 



*' Similar proceedings on this farm have produced similar re- 

 sults ; and, if now let in the market, I have no doubt that after 

 two years of good treatment these farms would be let at 205. an 

 acre, and I do not despair of doubling this figure in the course 

 of time. 



" The exact weight of the turnip crop this season is, on raw 

 bog, drained, limed, and cropped this year for the first time, 

 24 tons per acre ; manure, seaweed. On land ploughed but 

 not cropped, last year 23- tons ; mixed mineral manure. On 

 and from which a crop of oats had previously been taken, 29 

 tons ; manure, farmyard, with 3 cwt. per acre mineral manure. 



" Last year my excellent steward, Mr. MacAlister, visited 

 the Duke of Sutherland's reclamations in Scotland, and was 

 kindly and hospitably received. He found the land and the 

 procedure adopted almost identical, with the conviction that 

 oxen and horses will suit us better at the present time than 

 steam culture, chiefly on the score of economy. He also visit- 

 ed the Bridgewater Estate at Chat Moss, near Manchester, 

 where so much has been done to bring the deep peat into culti- 

 vation, and he found the system that has been followed there 

 for so many years to be like that described above, marl, how- 

 ever, being used in the place of lime." 



At the time of my visit to Kylcmorc the hay crops were 

 down and partly carried on the reclaimed bog-land above de- 

 scribed. The contrast of its luxuriance with the dark and 

 dreary desolation of the many estates 1 had seen during three 

 summers' wanderings through Ireland added further proof of 

 the infamy of the majority of Irish landlords, by showing what 

 Ireland would have been had they done their duty. 



