1846.] Irish Agriculture. 201 



More than this. He can send his children to school five or six 

 months in the year, until they are 16 or 17 years old, and can, 

 and often does, educate them to the learned professions. Great 

 as the difference is, however, between the expenditures — the 

 " outgoes " — of the American and Irish farmer, it by no means 

 explains the monstrous discrepancy between a given amount of 

 land supporting sixty persons or only six. Nor do the highest 

 market prices at which products are sold in Ireland explain it. 

 Saying nothing about the people, the amount of stock kept on the 

 land shows conclusively, as I have before stated, that such farmers 

 as those whose farms and stock are enumerated in the foregoing 

 table, actually obtam a much larger product per acre, than the 

 proprietors of the best American lands. The question again 

 arises, whence is it? This is best answered by considering the 

 system of husbandry under which they obtain these results, the 

 new system, as it is called, introduced by Mr. Blaker. 



Mr. B. found these small farms imperfectly drained, notwith- 

 standing they w^ere cut up into various small plats or fields by 

 numerous ditches. Mr. B. introduced furrow-draining, and urged 

 the leveling of all the surface ditches. This resulted in a con- 

 siderable saving of the land, — and the whole farm, with the ex- 

 ception of the enclosure about the barns, &c., is thrown into one 

 field. The crops are then put in in " strips " across the entire 

 farm. This of course is followed by the practice of soiling the 

 whole stock. Mr. B. contends that two cows can be thus sum- 

 mered from the same land one would require if pastured. He 

 also recommends a larger proportion of roots and other crops to 

 be fed green, than we know anything about in this country. 

 This is necessary where the soiling system is pursued, and it leads 

 to an indefinite increase of manures. These manures, increased 

 by composts, and protected from the weather, are sufficient in 

 many instances to give a dressing to one-third of the whole farm!* 



• I am sensible, on casting my eye back over this, that I have not been 

 sufficiently full to give a complete view of the " new husbandry." I have 

 written this from a sick-room — in the short intervals allowed from the cure 

 of the sick — and consequently with constantly diverted attention. 



