XIV 



CENTRAL IRELAND : THE GRAZINGS AND 

 LAND HUNGER 



THE tobacco-growing by no means exhausted the 

 agricultural interests of Rand lest own ; there were also 

 to be seen good crops of all kinds, the process of 

 breaking the hemp grown as wind-breaks between 

 the tobacco, the rope made from the fibre, and, not 

 least, the best known herd of Hereford cattle in 

 Ireland. Here again Sir Nugent Everard does not 

 see exactly eye to eye with the conservative Irishmen, 

 who, because Ireland is famous for its Shorthorn stores 

 and milch cattle, would banish all other breeds. But 

 the virtues of the first cross for putting on flesh rapidly 

 were to be seen in some tremendous animals grazing 

 in the park, animals being prepared to continue our 

 host's repeated demonstrations of the virtues of the 

 Hereford at the winter shows at Ball's Bridge. 



In the main it is a grazing country round Navan, 

 so rich and so valuable for this purpose that it is 

 difficult to see how it can be made to pay equally 

 well under tillage. Our host farmed his own demesne 

 lands, having sold the rest of the estate under the Act ; 

 and the vagaries of Irish land legislation were never 

 more curiously illustrated than by one case he re- 

 counted of land in the district formerly let to a 

 tenant at 403. an acre, and bought on this basis, or 



rather on that of a reduced judicial rent, only to be 



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