30O Value of Mr. Foster's Plantations. 



in my opinion, is the best mode, as the losses 

 are less, and I conceive the progress of the 

 plants greater. Had I had any indecision of 

 opinion as to the manifest advantages of plant- 

 ing, the survey of this morning would have 

 convinced me. In sixty years, Mr. Foster's 

 plantations will be worth a greater sum than 

 the sale of his whole estate at present would 

 produce. Every other part of his property is 

 under judicious management. Timber is fur- 

 nished to the tenants for the buildings they 

 may wish to erect ; but they are bound to cover 

 them with slate, no straw being permitted to 

 be thus applied. Agriculture suffers great in- 

 jury from the general practice of thatching 

 with straw in Ireland : probably the produce 

 of one hundred thousand acres is annually thus 

 disposed of, which, if judiciously converted into 

 manure, would be sufficient to supply twenty- 

 five thousand acres of arable land. 



The bogs in Ireland are, by Dr. Beaufort, 

 estimated at two millions of acres, or nearly a 

 ninth-part of the island mountains, water, and 

 wastes at about three millions ; hence it follows 

 that, if Ireland contain eighteen and a half mil- 

 lions of acres, thirteen and a half only can be 

 applicable to the purposes of husbandry, which 

 would allow but two acres and a quarter for the 



