Clare Island Survey — Agriculture and its History. 5 33 



leaseholders on a hundred acres each; and on the rest eight families of 

 husbandmen, artificers, and cottagers." 1 



The incomers were English and Scotch, chiefly of the landowning and farming 

 classes. They had left a country which had already made considerable advance 

 in agriculture — England had done so, at any rate. They had been accustomed 

 to the three-field system or to the more modern system of inclosed fields, on 

 which various crops were grown for shorter or longer periods and were then 

 left down to pasture. They knew about reclamation and draining and some 

 of the methods then in vogue to improve or keep up the fertility of the land. 

 Their first move, therefore, was to apply their previous knowledge and experience 

 to Irish land. How they did this and how necessary it was can be shown 

 by some quotations from Gerard Boate's "Ireland's Natural History," published 

 by Hartlib in 1652. 2 Boate himself had not been in Ireland, but he " got 

 information from his brother Arnold who lived in Ireland and from other 

 English in Ireland." 3 



Describing the soils of Ireland and their fertility, Boate says : " There be 

 indeed some countries in Ireland, where the ground underneath being nothing 

 but stones, and the good mold upon it but very thin, it is nevertheless fruitful 

 in corn and bringeth sweet grass in great plenty, so as sheep and other cattell 

 do wonderfull wel thrive there ; which kind of land is very common in the 

 County of Galloway, and in some other Counties of Connaught, as also in 

 sundry parts of other Provinces. But the reason thereof is in those parts, 

 because the stone whereon the mould doth lye so thinly, is not Free-stone, 

 or any such cold material, but Lime-stone, which doth so warm the ground, 

 and giveth it so much strength that what it wants in depth, is thereby 

 recompensed." 4 



Yet draining was necessary ; for, " except in the case now by us declared, 

 neither corn nor grass will grow kindly, where the ground, though otherwise 

 good, is not deep enough, as also where it hath a bad crust underneath. 

 From whence it commeth that in many places, where the grass doth grow 

 very thick and high, the same nevertheless is so unfit for the food of beasts, 

 that cows and sheep will hardly touch it (especially if they have been kept 

 in better pastures first) except that by extreme famine they be compelled 

 thereto ; and that by reason of the coarseness and sowerness of the grass 

 caused by the standing still of the water, the which through the unfitness of 

 the neather crust, finding not a free passage downwards, maketh cold tho 

 good mold, and the crop and grass degenerate from its naturall goodness. 



1 Quoted in Richey, p. C03, from Carte. 



2 This book was republished in Dublin in " A Collection of Tracts and Treatises," 1860. 



3 Dictionary of National Biography. 



4 Ireland's Natural History, original edition, p. 85. 



R.I.A. PBOC, VOL. XXXI. E 5 



