Book I. AGRICULTURE IN THE BRITISH ISLES. 135 



835. The ninth district comprehends the northern part of Kilkenny, Kildare, the cultivated parts of 

 Westmeath, Meath, and Louth. Wheat here enters into the system of culture, but the preparatory 

 fallows are very bad. Clover has been introduced into the district, but under the bad system of sowing 

 it upon land exhausted, and covered by weeds. Farms are large, and the mode of culture similar to what 

 is pursued in England, though the details are executed in a slovenly manner. {Ibid., i. 413.) 



836. The agricultural implements and operations used in Ireland are all of the rudest 

 construction. The plough, the spade, the flail, the car, all equally partake of imper- 

 fections and defects. The fallows are not well attended to ; three ploughings are usually 

 deemed sufficient, and, from the imperfection of the plough, the ground at the end is 

 generally full of weeds. Trenching land is very general ; they form it into beds, and 

 shovel out a deep trench between them, throwing up the earth. The expense of this 

 operation is about eight shillings an acre. Wheat, as will be seen from the preceding 

 details, is not by any means generally cultivated. It is unknown in Monaghan, Tyrone, 

 Derry, Donegal, Sligo, Mayo, Leitrim, and Cavan, though it is grown to a consider- 

 able extent in Kilkenny, Carlow, Dublin, Meath, Louth, and parts of Limerick, 



lipperary, Clare, and Cork. It is generally sown after potatoes or fallow. The Irish 

 wheat is, for the most part, coarse and of inferior quality, and does not yield so much 

 saccharine matter by twenty per cent, as the English. (Ibid., i. 429. 442.) 



837. Barley is more generalhj cultivated in Ireland than wheat, and it is generally sown 

 after potatoes. Oats, however, constitute the species of grain most extensively raised ; 

 it is calculated that, throughout the whole kingdom, there are ten acres of oats sown for 

 one of any other species of corn. The Irish oats, however, are decidedly inferior to 

 the English. 



838. The potatoes of Ireland have long been celebrated, both on account of their 

 quantity and excellent qualities : they are cultivated on every species of soil, either in 

 drills or lazy beds. Potato land lets from six pounds six shillings to ten pounds ten 

 shillings per acre ; and the expense of culture, including rent, varies from thirteen 

 pounds to sixteen pounds per acre. The produce is from eight hundred stone to one 

 thousand stone the acre, at twenty-one pounds to the stone ; that is, from sixteen 

 thousand eight hundred to twenty-one thousand pounds. (Ibid., i. 450.) 



839. The indigenous grasses of Irelami are not of any peculiar excellence. Notwith- 

 standing all that has been said of the florin grass, its excellence and utility may be called 

 in question. Their hay is seldom from sown grasses, generally consisting of the spon- 

 taneous produce of the soil. Clover is almost unknown. Newenham calculates that 

 there are not flve thousand acres under this crop in the whole island. (Newenham, 314. ; 

 Wakefield, i. 467.) 



840. There are few live hedges in Ireland ; in the level stone districts, stone walls, and 

 in other places turf banks, are the usual fences. 



841. The dairy is the most extensive and the best managed part of Irish husbandry. 

 Kerry, Cork, Waterford, Carlow, Meath, "Westmeath, Longford, and Fermanagh, as 

 well as the mountains of Leitrim and Sligo, are principally occupied by dairy farms. 

 Butter is the chief produce. The average number of cows on a dairy farm amounts to 

 thirty or forty ; three acres of land, of middling quality, are deemed necessary for the sub- 

 sistence of each cow. A cow produces on an average eight quarts in twenty-four hours in 

 summer, and five in winter ; four good milkers will yield a quarter of a cwt. of butter 

 in a week. The best butter is made in Carlow ; the worst in Limerick and Meath. 

 Generally speaking, the Irish are very cleanly in making this article ; and it is exported 

 to England, the East and West Indies, and Portugal. (Wakefield, i. 325. et seq.) The 

 art of salting butter, Chaptal observes, is better known in Ireland than in any other 

 country. (Chimie applique a V Agriculture.) The grazing of Ireland is not, as in 

 England, a part of the regular rotation of crops, but is carried on in a country exclusively 

 devoted to the breeding of cattle, like the highlands of Scotland. Great tracts of the 

 country also are devoted to the grazing of sheep. Roscommon, Galway, Clare, Limerick, 

 and Tipperary are the chief breeding counties for sheep ; and Galway, Clare, Roscom- 

 mon, Tipperary, and Meath are the places where they are fattened. The sheep are of 

 the long-woolled kind, and very large : they are never kept in sheepfolds, and hardly 

 ever fed on turnips ; which is chiefly owing to the very limited demand for mutton 

 among the labouring people. (Ibid., i. 341.) 



842. The depressed state of the agricidture of Ireland is considered as proceeding from 

 the depressed state of the people. The main cause of their sufferings is traced by most 

 writers (Young, Dewar, Newenham, Wakefleld, Curwen, &c.) to the redundancy of 

 population. In 1791, the population of the whole kingdom amounted to 4,200,000 per- 

 sons, and it increases at the rate of one forty-sixth part per annum ; or, in other words, 

 it doubles itself every forty-six years. As might be expected in a country where the 

 increase in the number of mankind has so far outstripped the progress of its wealth, and 

 the increase of its industry, the condition of the people is in every department marked by 

 extreme indigence, (Dewar, 91. ; Young, ii. 123.) The houses in which they dwell, 

 the furniture in their interior, their clothing, food, and general way of life, all equally 



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