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meadow, with a cold retentive bottom, of sandy clay ; this 

 patch, which never had been broken up, nor manured, 

 annually yielding a wretched crop of coarse spritty hay. 



I called on my neighbours, the Earls of Caledon 

 and GosFORD, requesting them to come and inspect a 

 wretched piece of ground, on which I promised to raise, in 

 the course of the year, a crop of hay of superior quality, 

 and double the amount of any grown in Ireland that year. 



My noble friends were so good as to obey my call, and 

 inspect the ground in February 1815, in its natural state : 

 they were much amused at my promise of raising a great 

 crop of hay, from so miserable a soil ; and still more when 

 I assured them, I should neither break the surface, sow 

 seed, or plant roots, or perform any other operation, than 

 draining^ weeding^ and top-dressing with moor and ashes 

 burnt contiguous. 



In October of the same year, I gave my noble friends 

 notice I had performed my promise, and was ready for 

 inspection: they came in November, attended by friends, 

 on whom I observed them impressing the wretched state 

 in which they had seen this piece (forty-eight perches) nine 

 months before, but now covered with an immense crop, 

 some in lapcock, but the greater part uncut — different 

 portions of which were mowed before them. The two 

 Earls authorized me to say, that the crop seemed treble 

 the amount of those they were used to see cut. 



The crop produced in this patch in 1816, was still 

 better; and in 1817, when mowed a month earlier, was 

 very fine ; since it was cut, an unusually*dry October 

 enabled me to save it without a shower. When it had stood 

 a fortnight iu trampcock, it was weighed in November, in 

 a drier state than I ever saw my hay weighed before ; and, 

 by affidavit of the weighers, came to five tons, six hundred, 

 three quarters, at eight stone the hundred, to the English 



