THE IRELAND OF TO-DAY. 35 



ture, and with ' extensive ' technical methods.^ 

 Altogether 876,000 persons were engaged in 

 agriculture, of whom about 140,000 (men and 

 women) are designated as labourers and cotta- 

 gers; 85,000 as indoor servants, and in addition 

 to these we must also add to the agricultural 

 population some of the 181,000 individuals 

 generally described as labourers. 



Ireland is a land of permanent pasture. Even 

 the fact that out of 15 million acres of arable 

 land only 350,000 acres are allotted to turnips, 

 shows how little an intensive system of crop 

 rotation is followed in Ireland. As a denser ^ 

 population is impossible without agriculture, and \ 

 intensive agriculture can scarcely be pursued | 

 without turnips, the Irish question is ultimately I 

 a 'turnip question.' Two-thirds of the country i 



^ Thanks to the extraordinary fruitfulness of the soil taken 

 into cultivation, the yields from the various crops are sub- 

 stantially greater than in England, The average yield in the 

 years 1893-1902 amounted to:— 



The potato is the poor man's crop, and is therefore wrung 

 from poor soils (Agricultural Statistics, 1903). [Considerable 

 doubt exists as to the accuracy of the estimated yield of crops 

 in Ireland, and in the returns for 1905 (cd. 2854) the question 

 is stated to be under investigation. TransL^ 



