as affecting Agriculture in Ireland. 
383 
racter of the season than elsewhere, and the crop is more often 
inferior. Over thirty years ago, before the Famine, when I began 
to farm in Irehind, the universal rotation in the county of Cork, 
except near the mountains, was potatoes on lea manured (and 
such lea as it was ! — land left to rest, without grass seeds even,, 
and one mass of weeds; and then the manuring! — earth drawn 
from the field, with a little calcareous sand and the refuse of tlie- 
dwelling house mixed), followed by wheat. Oats only came in as 
a scourging crop when the land would no longer grow wheat. 
The wheat was a poor crop, five or six barrels of twenty stones, 
about equal to twenty-four bushels, being considered good. Half 
that produce was much more common. But as Corn-law prices, 
then ruled, farmers were content, except in bad years, which in 
that climate were frequent. 
After I had been farming pretty well for some years, with only a 
moderate increase of crop, 1 remember thinking the cause must 
be in the previously exhausted condition of the soil, and that I 
might get over it, and grow good wheat by a rotation of (1) 
swedes, (2) rape, (3) wheat. The swedes and rape were well 
manured with bones, besides other manure, and half the swedes 
and all the rape were eaten with sheep. The wheat looked all 
that could be desired during the spring and summer till harvest, 
but it was no sooner in shock than it was enough to lift a 
sheaf to have a painful proof of the crop's lightness. In fact, it 
was worse than the crop of the small farmer in the next field, 
that had not been a quarter so well done by. There was sunlight 
enough to ripen his thin, short-strawed crop tolerably. But the 
ears of my handsome crop Avere not half filled, and much of 
the corn in them was only fit for chicken's food. The same 
result several years in succession at last taught its lesson. 
I gave up trying to grow any corn except oats. The common 
farmers, too, have gradually ceased to grow wheat, except a 
small piece for their own consumption (as it is one of the curiosi- 
ties of our stage of development that every farmer thinks it 
needful to grow the food of himself and his family on his own 
farm ; so, as potatoes will no longer grow well, he grows some 
wheat wherever he can for home consumption). They, too, have 
taken to oats as the chief crop. Wheat being usually lower in 
price than it was in Corn-law times, and oats much higher, nO' 
doubt tends to the same end. There is a general opinion, too, 
that the local climate has altered. The oats even are not the 
better sorts of oats. Black Tartary oats, the coarsest sort 
known, succeed best by far. But even with oats, and thoroughly 
good farming, the produce in corn is not on the average of years, 
what it should be ; nothing like Avhat such farming would pro- 
duce in England or Scotland. The upland soil in my district is 
