118 Scientific Proceedings, Royal Dublin Society. 



the Cork and Kerry bays ; the sand was carted inland for miles, 

 even across the mountains into the county Limerick. If the first 

 crop is to be turnips, seaweed is an excellent manure. 



It is not an uncommon practice in some places, to cut turf in 

 the furrows after the potatoes are planted ; thus additionally 

 draining the peat and deepening the soil. When possible, some 

 carry clay or the like to earth the potatoes ; an excellent plan, as 

 it adds to the fertility of the peat. The beds or ridges are laid 

 out of such a width that in three years the whole of the plot has 

 been successively in furrows ; thus all the surface of the bog, for 

 a depth of eighteen inches or more, has been disturbed and de- 

 prived of its spongy character. The potato crops of the second 

 aiid third years are usually better than that of the first. 



Large cultivators seem now to approve of liming, or, as it is 

 called, " boiling the bog," as it gives the quickest return ; but to 

 make permanent grass land of a bog it must be continually top- 

 dressed with gravel, clay, marl, pounded up limestone, or some 

 substance that will add weight ; otherwise it will crack in the 

 heat of the summer, then form " tussocks" and eventually revert 

 to bog land. Pounded or crushed limestone, or half burnt lime, 

 which is used by some, is more advantageous than quick lime, 

 because although the latter gives quick return, the others last 

 longer in the soil. Such bogs, if to be cultivated, or "taken in" 

 on a large scale, would require a regular system of drainage ; 

 while the spongy nature of the whole tract could be destroyed in 

 one or two years by using a grubber ; the plough would be used 

 in place of spade labour. 



In the fens of Cambridgeshire there is, in places, good deep corn 

 land over bog from fifteen to twenty feet deep, which has been 

 brought into its present condition princi])al]y by the addition of 

 pounded chalk and chalk gravel, and by warping. In many places, 

 as in the counties of Tipperary and Clare, warping might be advan- 

 tageously employed in the improvement of this kind of bog, by 

 turning onto them, during floods, the thick muddy streams from 

 the hills and uplands ; even the streams that only bring down 

 gravel and sand would be beneficial, as j)roved in many mountain 

 valleys, where a natural warping goes on ; such materials carried 

 down by a torrent changing the surface of a bog into pasture. I 

 have noted a remarkable instance of this in the mountains near 



