160 SCIENCE IN SHORT CHAPTERS. 



cut deep enough to go right down to the gravel below. 

 These are supplemented by the "sheep drains," or surface- 

 drains, which are about twenty inches wide at top, and 

 narrow downwards to six inches at bottom. They run 

 parallel to each other, with a space of about ten yards be- 

 tween, and cost one penny per six yards. 



This first step having been made, the bog is left for two 

 years, during which it drains, consolidates, and sinks some- 

 what. If the bog is deep, the turf, which has now become 

 valuable by consolidation, should be cut. 



After this it is left about two years longer, with the 

 drains still open. Then the drains are cleared and deep- 

 ened, and a wedge-shaped sod, too wide to reach the bot- 

 tom, is rammed in so as to leave below it a permanent 

 tubular covered drain, which is thus made without the aid 

 of any tiles or other outside material. The drainage is 

 now completed, and the surface prepared for the important 

 operation of dressing with lime, which, as the people ex- 

 pressively say, " boils the bog," and converts it into a soil 

 suitable for direct agricultural operations. 



Potatoes and turnips may now be set in "lazy bed" 

 ridges. Mr. Mitchell Henry save, "Good herbage will 

 grow on the bog thus treated; but as much as possible 

 should at once be put into root-crops, with farm-yard 

 manure for potatoes and turnips. The more lime you give 

 the better will be your crop; and treated thus there is no 

 doubt that even during the first year land so reclaimed will 

 yield remunerative crops." And further, that "after be- 

 ing broken up a second time the laud materially improves, 

 and becomes doubly valuable." Also that he has no doubt 

 that " all bog-lauds may be thus reclaimed, but it is up- 

 hill work, and not remunerative to attempt the reclama- 

 tion of bogs that are more than four feet in depth." 



There is another and a simpler method of dealing with 

 bogs viz., setting them into narrow ridges; cutting broad 

 trenches between the ridges; piling the turf cut out from 

 these trenches into little heaps a few feet apart, burning 

 them, and spreading the ashes over the ridges. This is 

 rather largely practiced on the coast of Donegal, in con- 

 junction with sea-weed manuring, and is prohibited in 



