384 
On Climate and the Supply of Labour 
a useful turnip loam, rather thin from the rock being near the 
surface, but growing great crops of swedes. (Manure as highly as 
we please, we cannot grow half a Norfolk crop of mangolds, for 
the same reason, I think, that we cannot grow good corn crops.) 
It steadily improves with good farming in the yield of grass, and 
in the quantity of stock it will feed, and not at all slowly. The 
bottom land is generally more or less peaty, with clay below, and 
when drained is very good for grass. For years I have used bought 
manures and cake largely ; last year to the value of 20s. per 
acre over the whole farm of seven hundred acres. Yet the corn 
hardly increases ; fifty bushels of oats per acre is still as much 
as we can grow in a good year, even after sheep folded on swedes, 
with hay and cake. I am not able to give measured quantities 
of any value, for the farm is managed in subordination to the 
needs of the estate, with sometimes a slice of good land let 
away in order to improve a tenant's farm, sometimes a slice of 
reclaimed land added to it, sometimes of land given up by a bad 
tenant, and worn out to a degree of exhaustion that will not 
grow either weeds or couch (it is something to have come to look 
on a good crop of couch as a hopeful sign of land), and which 
swallows up all the manure of a year or two as a starved beast 
swallows good feeding without showing it. Rotation and exact 
quantities at successive intervals thus are made almost impossible ; 
but my conviction is strong, from close observation, that the 
difficulty of growing larger crops of oats is due to the climate, 
which, though in ordinary years it will ripen a moderate crop, 
has too much moisture and too little sunshine to ripen a really 
heavy crop, except in chance seasons. 
On the other hand, the very same climate that is so unfavour- 
able for corn is extraordinarily favourable for grass, which con- 
tinues to grow often through most part of the winter. 
And this is the true explanation of the inclination to grass- 
farming that is almost universal in Ireland, not only among large 
farmers and landowners farming on their own account, but 
equally among middling and small farmers. The small farmer 
formerly tilled more of his farm in proportion, because it took 
much of his land to provide the food for his family, but even 
before the famine the constant argument used by small farmers 
seeking more land was, " If I get more land , I can leave more out 
in grass." When a farmer failed, it was always said, " He 
tilled too much of his land." There was never any doubt but 
that the land paid best in grass, when the farmer could afford to 
l)uy stock. The climate was and is the ruling principle, as Mr. 
Whitley said. Even when the grass farming is bad, as it often 
is, it still pays better than the equally bad tillage farming that 
the same farmer would practise on the same farm. The views in 
