FODDER CROPS 297 



milk factory, to which one farmer told us he delivered 

 his milk at 4jd. per gallon. The creameries can pay 

 nearly the same price and also give back to the farmer 

 the separated milk, which he can make of considerable 

 value by raising pigs or calves. Sheep also become a 

 prominent feature in the farming of Cork ; we saw 

 chiefly the white-faced ewes, nominally perhaps Ros- 

 commons, but showing little evidence of breed, and 

 the farmer with whom we talked was in the habit of 

 buying cull ewes out of Galway and the West, and 

 crossing them for one or two years with a Down 

 ram. The farming struck us as neither good nor bad, 

 but on the whole hardly worthy of the deep soils and 

 the favourable climate, but then the soft languorous 

 airs of the south, however favourable to vegetation, are 

 not so good for men, and environment as well as breed 

 has something to do with the fiercer energies of Ulster. 



There was no great change in the character of the 

 country on our return journey a little farther westward 

 from Cork to Limerick. In the broad valleys the land 

 is fertile and the climate farmable ; the small farms 

 each possess a few acres under the plough, and grow 

 oats, sometimes barley or wheat, potatoes, and a few 

 turnips ; the rest of the land is grazed by milch cows, 

 with sheep on the uplands. Tillage is restricted both 

 by the lack of men and of labour-saving implements. 

 When one man with inadequate tools has to work the 

 whole holding even five acres of plough land mean 

 very heavy labour, especially as most of the potato 

 and root land is cultivated by the spade. 



One of the advisers working in this district advocates 

 an extension of tillage, not so much to raise corn and 

 turnips, both of which are difficult in this climate, the 

 one by reason of the difficulty of getting on the land 

 in spring, the other because of the danger of a 



