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rate of about fifty bushels to the acre, and it is best 

 sxiited to light furze lands — of which we have a full 

 share in this country. Farms near the sea shore, 

 however, probaljly contain a sufficient quantity of 

 salt for the purpose of vegetation, and in such cases 

 an additional supply of it to the soil nnight be, not 

 only useless, but injurious. Storms from the sea 

 carry its spray sometimes to a surprisingly great dis- 

 tance from the shore : Salt is therefore supplied suf- 

 ficiently from this source to all the land upon our 

 coast for several miles into the interior. 



Irrigation, or watering- land, is, I fear, universally 

 neglected or unknown in the county of Wexford, 

 although high premiums are offered by the Agricul- 

 tural Associations to coax you into a system by which, 

 without much troulile or any expense, you may have 

 large crops of hay or luxuriant pasturage. How 

 shall I account for your apathy or dislike to irrigation, 

 which, in a thousand places of this county, to my own 

 knowledge, you might introduce with immense ad- 

 vantage. In the many favourable situations which 

 may be found for watering, meadows might l)e ren- 

 dered extremely vahiable (affording in a single year 

 returns four times greater than the expense incurred) 

 where coarse or scanty herbage now appears. Ninety- 

 nine streams out of a hundred are allowed to flow 

 aM'ay unprofitably, a great proportion of which might 

 be turned to account by creating meadow land of 

 permanent fertility. The use of running water to 

 the surface of land, for promoting the growth of 

 grasses, has been practised in warm countries from 

 the eai'liest ages, and seems to have been known in 

 parts of England since the time of the Roman inva- 

 sions, there having been irrigated meadows near Sa- 

 lisbury, from time immemorial. Now, irrigation acts 

 as a means of giving food to grasses — of consolidating 

 boggy and mossy lands (after being well drained) as 

 a destroyer of certain kinds of weeds, and as the 

 cause of warmth in winter and of coldness in summer ; 



