TIREY. AGRICULTURE. 31 



scribed, scarcely any notion is entertained of the rotation 

 of crops, or of the advantages to be derived from it. 

 Fallowing is not practised, perhaps it might not often be 

 required. Where potatoes have been planted, either on 

 old ridges or for the bringing in of waste lands, a large 

 quantity of manure is applied ; and this serves generally 

 for the crops .of corn that are to succeed, although a 

 small quantity is occasionally used with them. Barley 

 thus succeeds to potatoes, while that again is followed 

 by oats for two or three, or even a greater number of 

 years, till the land fairly refuses to yield more. In 

 other cases, the barley is sown with manure, and the 

 oats follow as before. Turnips, pease, beans, grass 

 seeds, and clover, are unknown ; and the art of farming 

 is thus at least reduced to a system which it requires 

 but little knowledge to conduct. Not so, however, the 

 expense, which is great in proportion to the imperfec- 

 tion of the modes and the scantiness of the produce. 

 It is no diminution of the expense that it is not found in 

 the farmer's accounts ; that his labour and the labour 

 of his family are reckoned as nothing ; and that the keep 

 of his useless horses does not enter into his calculation. 

 His want of calculation would be a more appropriate term, 

 since the slightest attention to this subject would show, 

 that the cultivation of a few acres could never repay 

 the expense of four or five horses and as many people, 

 were he even rewarded with a full crop. If it be 

 considered that his crop sometimes does not produce 

 the double of his seed, and that four returns in oats 

 are a good crop, we can scarcely set a sufficient price 

 on his grain, or discover by what means he is enabled 

 to pay any rent for the land on which his industry is 

 thus wasted. 



Besides barley and oats, a small quantity of rye is 

 cultivated in some of the sandy islands, since a crop of 

 this grain can be obtained after oats have ceased to grow. 

 These crops are both short and thin. 



