TI11EY. AGRICULTURE. 37 



are to be procured by other methods than the possession 

 of land. The present habits of subsisting poorly on the 

 produce of land by an alternation of severe labour and 

 idleness, have no tendency to correct themselves. The 

 forcible establishment of manufactures and of fisheries 

 are projects only for inconsiderate benevolence : it is by 

 the gradual change of opinions and practices, by the 

 presentation of new motives and the creation of new 

 desires, that the state of society must be changed. 

 All that which ought to follow, will proceed in its 

 natural order, without force, without loss, and without 

 disappointment. 



The system of pasturage forms the remaining and the 

 chief branch of the rural economy of the islands. It is 

 evident that the high mountain pastures which constitute 

 the principal part of the country, are in a great measure 

 incapable of improvement ; but the natives seem unfor- 

 tunately to have formed the same opinion respecting the 

 lower ones, and thus to have neglected those obvious 

 improvements of enclosing, top-dressing, draining, or 

 laying down to grass after occasional cultivation, by 

 which their value would be so materially increased. 

 The possible improvements of that which may be 

 called waste land, may also be considered as pointing 

 rather to an ameliorated system of pasturage, than to 

 agriculture properly speaking. The chief part of such 

 wastes is moor land, formed principally of a mixed and 

 dry peaty soil, commonly thin, and placed on a bottom of 

 gravel or coarse clay ; the produce consisting chiefly of 

 heaths, with several coarse grasses and some mosses. 

 Where these lands approach the sea the growth of such 

 plants is checked, and at last destroyed ; a fine green 

 pasture succeeding, which, under proper management, is 

 capable of producing good crops of corn. The shores of 

 the Long Island, wherever the numerous inlets of the sea 

 intersect these moors, show striking examples of the fer- 

 tilizing powers which the vicinity of the salt water pos- 



