39(J OBSERVATIONS ON GARDEN HUSBANDRY IN IRELAND. 
obvious apathy and indolence of his character. He is not a man who 
will ever make a steady effort to ameliorate his condition; nor do I see 
how he, and a vast proportion of the peasantry of the southern and 
western districts of Ireland, can be led to an improved condition, with¬ 
out the active superintendence of agents, insisting upon the practice of 
garden culture, and authorised to afford the necessary facilities, and 
supply models of practical good management on the properties intrusted 
to their charge. The condition of the peasantry, in the districts to 
which I have just now referred, is lamentably bad, and likely to con¬ 
tinue so, as far as existing appearances warrant the inference; and 
until garden husbandry be generally established, no substantial improve¬ 
ment can be expected in the habits or the comforts of those whose 
miseries are now extreme, and yet so little understood, and so crimi¬ 
nally unheeded by those who are awfully responsible for the degradation 
and bitter sufferings of their condition. 
And it is especially to be deplored, that in those very places (the 
mountain and bog districts) where land is of little or no value at pre¬ 
sent, and where it is naturally the best for gardens, no care is taken to 
render it available to the comforts of the poor. 
“ An example of what bog-land properly reclaimed will do, in the 
way of garden, may be seen by the great How-bog near Limerick, con¬ 
sisting of one hundred and eighty-four Irish acres, which Messrs. Steele 
and Browne have taken for the purpose of supplying fuel to their dis¬ 
tillery at Limerick. A few years ago this spirited company commenced 
their first operations, by building in the bog a neat slated cottage for 
their very active and intelligent manager, which is so deep, that the 
roof of the house (based, however, on the firm subsoil) was hardly 
visible from the Shannon, which bounds this track on the western 
side. 
“ In the course of a few years, after dividing the bog by straight 
drains, intersecting each other at right angles into sections containing 
about six acres each, and cutting away the peat in regular courses, a 
considerable extent has been converted into meadow land, and a garden 
formed adjoining the house. The portion devoted to garden, like the 
other reclaimed parts, has not been sunk to the solid subsoil; it is 
elastic to the tread, yet sufficiently consolidated by a covering of bluish 
clay, two or three inches in depth, laid over the fibrous and refuse 
portions of the abstracted peat, and incorporated with it by the succes¬ 
sive operations of the spade .”—Irish Favmer's and Gardener s Mag . 
