66 Gardening in the South of Ireland. 



keep the place like such and such a place ? as would be the case 

 in England, where both he and his employer must know of 

 places maintained in good order. 



The Cork and other Horticultural Societies are likely to do 

 good, if properly followed up ; but I am much afraid that a 

 schism is creeping into the Cork Society already, as has hap- 

 pened in almost every other useful club or society attempted in 

 that city. I do not consider it expedient to have the Horticul- 

 tural shows in any nursery ; it makes it too much of a party 

 business. The Society ought to build and lay out a proper 

 place, with all conveniencies for themselves, if they wish to con- 

 tinue, and be independent. It is a loss to horticulture, at this 

 time, that the Botanic Gardens in Cork were given up: they 

 would have been a rallying point for the Society, which it seems 

 to want much. The class of noblemen and gentlemen has 

 planted considerably within the last thirty years, but there seems 

 to be a falling off within these six years. The principal kinds 

 of trees planted are oaks (by such as know their value), with 

 larch and Scotch and spruce firs as nurses. This system would 

 do well if carried through with care : but very often the planta- 

 tion is neither thinned nor pruned until the oaks are smothered, 

 or so weak-drawn, that the best judges would think it a pity to 

 cutaway the fine larch, &c., for the sake of such poor miserable- 

 looking trees ; and thus, very often, the oaks are quite lost, pai- 

 ticularly when the thinning of such plantations falls under the 

 care of persons of little experience. Beech is not so much 

 planted now as it was forty or fifty years ago. Ash is very much 

 neglected, because it is so liable to be cut by trespassers for 

 firing and other uses ; and in a few years it will be a scarce 

 article in Ireland, if some few do not take courage and plant it. 

 Any one that keeps wood-rangers might protect ash as well as 

 other timber, if planted in masses, and not all over the country 

 in hedgerows, as it is at present. Hedges and hedgerows are 

 very much neglected in Ireland, even in the demesnes of noble- 

 men of the first rank. These remarks are only meant as appli- 

 cable to the majority of this class : there are, indeed, a few 

 exceptions, but, at present, I do not mean to particularise. 



In the second class may be placed the rectors of parishes, the 

 second class of gentry, and merchants. Many of this class have 

 tolerable walled-in gardens : very few have more glass than a 

 few frames for melons and cucumbers. Most of them have an 

 orchard of apples for cider; a small flower-garden, with a few 

 shrubs ; no arboretum ; a small lawn with a screen of common 

 forest trees, a few clumps, and single trees of the commonest 

 kinds, in general badly planted. 



I consider this class much on the advance within these last 

 twenty-five years. The cause seems to be, that they live nearer 



