396 The Prize System as applied to Small Farmers in Ireland. 
poor herbage, which often contains more weeds than grass, and 
which would pay far better in tillage. At present the gross 
return from those four millions of acres does not amount to 
twice the rent ; if put under a proper system, the yield would 
amount to five times the rent, and the wealth of the country 
would be increased to the extent of several millions sterling a 
year, which would be available for distribution among labourers, 
farmers, manure- and seed-merchants, and shopkeepers of all 
kinds. In due time, too, the landlords would obtain an increase 
of rent, for it is a law of agricultural progress that anything 
which increases the farmers' profits tends to advance the rent of 
the land. 
Besides the four million acres of pasture referred to, there 
are some seven million acres of land in permanent grass in 
Ireland, the average yield of which could, by the application of 
correct knowledge, be increased very considerably. 
There is not, perhaps, in small farm management a greater 
defect than the usual mode of producing grass. Sometimes the 
farmer does not sow any grass-seeds at all, but allows the land to 
cover itself with whatever herbage it throws up naturally. Again, 
thousands of small farmers put their land into grass when it 
is reduced by corn crops and bad management to such a state 
of poverty that it will no longer give even a middling crop of 
grain. 
The state of the cultivated land of Ireland is also very de- 
fective, as is well known to all persons of experience. Through- 
out the country we meet a great many farmers who till their 
land in a very creditable way ; but it is notorious that on the 
vast majority of small farms the tillage is shallow and imperfect, 
and that the general management is extremely defective. As a 
rule, Irish farmers do not follow any systematic course of crop- 
ping, or observe any of the principles which modern science 
suggests for maintaining the land in a productive state. When 
a proper system of husbandry is adopted on a farm, all the tillage 
parts of it are manured in a certain number of years and equally 
enriched ; and if the land be well tilled and kept clean, all the 
crops are heavy and profitable. 
Manured root-crops form the backbone of improved husbandry. 
A great many of the small farmers of Ireland do not grow any 
manured crop but potatoes. They ought to grow turnips or 
mangels, or some of both, for feeding their cows in winter and 
spring. 
In many parts of the country little or no artificial grass is 
grown ; and the want of this is perhaps the greatest defect in 
the management of the small farms. On thousands of these 
farms there is no hay for wintering the cows ; and the result is 
