5 34 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



" For the same reason the land in many parts, where otherwise the soil in 

 it self would be fit enough to produce good Wheat or Barley, will hardly bear 

 anything else but Oats or Eye, and that none of the best." 



He tells that draining of the bogs was first begun by the English : " So 

 that it may easily be comprehended, that whoso could drain the water, and 

 for the future prevent the gathering thereof, might reduce most of the Bogs 

 in Ireland to firm land, and preserve them in that condition. But this hath 

 never been known to the Irish, or if it was, they never went about it, but to 

 the eontrarie let more and more of their good land grow boggy. 1 



" But as the Irish have been extreme careless in this, so the English .... 

 have set their industry at work for to remedy it, and having considered the 

 nature of the Bogs, and how possible it was to reduce many of them unto 

 good land, did some yeares since begin to goe about it all over the land, and 

 that with very good success." 2 



Then, having remarked that, but for the rebellion, many more bogs would 

 have been drained, he describes the process : " This draining of the Bogs 

 was performed in the manner following. On that side of the Bog where the 

 ground was somewhat sloaping, they cut a broad deep Trench, beginning 

 it in the firm ground, and advancing it unto the entrance of the Bog, into 

 which Trench the water would sink out of the next parts of the Bogs in great 

 abundance and that many times so suddenly, as if a great sluice had teen 

 opened, so as the labourers were constrained to run out of it with all speed 

 lest the force of the water should overwhelm and carry them away. Some part 

 of the Bog being by this meanes grown reasonable dry within a short space of 

 time, opportunity thereby was ministred to advance the Trench further into 

 the Bog : and so by little and little they went on with it untill at last they 

 carryed it quite across the Bog, from the one side to the other : And having 

 done this, they made a great many lesser Trenches out of the main one, on 

 both sides of the same ; the which bringing the water from all the parts of 

 the Bog unto the main Trench, did in a little while empty the Bog of all 

 its superfious moysture, and turn it into good and firm ground."' 3 



With regard to liming and marling, two new things, he says : " The 

 English living in Queens-county in Leinster having seen that in sundry parts 

 of England and Wales, especially in Pembrokeshire, Lime was used by the 

 inhabitants for the manuring and iniiching of their grounds, began some years 

 since to practise the same, and found themselves so well thereby, that in a 

 short time the use thereof grew very common amongst them, so as many of 

 them ever after used no other kind of dung. 4 " . . . 



1 IrelancTs Natural History, original edition, p. 113. 



p. 114. : T'.Kd.. p. 116. * Ibid., p. 96. 



