Irish Agriculture. 
37 
in compact lots, but once it is done, they soon find the advantage 
of having their land all lying together. 
As the old leases on Lord Longford's estates terminated, the 
lands were taken in hand and reduced to proper order. An 
agriculturist of great practical experience, who is still in his 
lordship's emplovment, was engraged : every farm was squared, 
and laid off in six equal sized fields or lots, one of which was 
occupied bv the houses, yards, &;c., the remaining five being 
devoted to the purposes of cultivation, the intention being to in- 
troduce a five-course rotation — the ordinary four-course shift 
lengthened bv pasture for a year — as being best adapted to the 
circumstances of the estate. The new fences, hedges, dykes, and 
ditches, were made at the proprietor's expense ; roads were con- 
structed where such were required to open up the estate ; arterial 
drainage to relieve the low-lying land subject to floods was 
effected, partlv in co-operation with adjoining proprietors ; each 
farm was thoroughlv drained in an efficient manner under the 
superintendence of the agriculturist at the joint expense of 
landlord and tenant, and svstematic cultivation was introduced. 
To encourage the tenants, the proprietors supplied them with 
grass seeds and turnip seeds at prime cost, but this has long since 
Ijecome vmnecessarv, as a svstem of cultivation embracing the 
growth of artificial grasses and roots soon became familiar to 
them. From the circumstance that, previous to the famine 
years," a beginning had been made in svstematic farming by the 
tenantry on Lord Longford's estates, the pressure of that period 
was not felt so heavilv bv them as i<: was in those districts where 
the condition of the small landholders had been previously 
neglectetl. The average size farms on his lordship s estates are 
from 30 to 50 statute acres, verv few reaching 100 acres. 
As the estate contains a considerable extent of deep bog, a 
wing, in fact, of the great Bog of Allen, it may be useful to note 
some points connected with the reclamation of that description 
of land as carried out on it. 
Draining was of course the first step, and all the bogs on the 
estate were drained by means of deep cuts run in straight lines, 
no matter what obstruction inter\ ened, and even after the bogs 
had subsided many of these cuts were, and still are, fully ten feet 
deep. To sink large open drains of this kind in shaking bog, 
was a task of considerable difficultv. The plan adopted bv the 
agriculturist, in order to prevent the cuts from filling in nearlv 
as fast as they were opened, was to mark off the line of drain, and 
then open pits, along this line, 18 feet in length bv 12 feet deep, 
the width at the surface corresponding to the depth, and graduallv 
sloping on each side to about three feet in width at the bottom. 
Lnbroken spaces of three and four feet were left between each 
pit, and as the latter were completed, the intervening spaces were 
