THE CLIMA TE OF IRELAND. 257 



like what such farming would produce in England 

 or Scotland. The upland soil in my district is a 

 useful turnip loam, rather thin from the rock being 

 near the surface, but growing great crops of swedes. 

 (Manure as highly as we please, we cannot grow 

 half a Norfolk crop of mangolds, for the same reason> 

 I think, that we cannot grow good corn crops.) It 

 steadily improves with good farming in the yield of 

 grass, and in the quantity of stock it will feed, and 

 not at all slowly. The bottom land is generally 

 more or less peaty, with clay below, and when 

 drained is very good for grass. For years I have 

 used bought manures and cake largely ; last year to 

 the value of 20s. per acre over the whole farm of 

 seven hundred acres. Yet the corn hardly increases ; 

 fifty bushels of oats per acre is still as much as we 

 can grow in a good year, even after sheep folded on 

 swedes, with hay and cake. I am not able to give 

 measured quantities of any value, for the farm is 

 managed in subordination to the needs of the estate, 

 with sometimes a slice of good land let away in 

 order to improve a tenant's farm, sometimes a slice 

 of reclaimed land added to it, sometimes of land 

 given up by a bad tenant, and worn out to a degree 

 of exhaustion that will not grow either weeds or 

 couch (it is something to have come to look on a 

 good crop of couch as a hopeful sign of land), and 

 which swallows up all the manure of a year or two 

 as a starved beast swallows good feeding without 



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