16 
THE SHEEP. 
THE KERRY BREED. 
Down. The greater part of the latter county, however, as well as Armagh, Monaghan, and Cavan, which in the war with 
Tyrone, had been encumbered with thick forests, had then become almost bare. With respect to Munster, he tells us, that the 
counties of Kerry and Tipperary possessed many great forests, notwithstanding that the English, especially the Earl of Cork, 
had made great havoc with the woods. _ . 
In this manner proceeded the spoiling of the natural riches of the beautiful Isle. The last Wolf was killed at the beginning 
of the 18th century, showing that then the destruction of the great Irish forests was nearly completed. In the place of these ver¬ 
dant Woods have arisen the dreary Bogs, which have covered so great a part of the land with the aspect of desolation,—affording 
fuel, indeed, by the sweat and toil of the miserable inhabitants, but covered with the innutritious plants proper to peat, and 
affording but a scanty sustenance to tlie lierds and flocks that tenant tbem. 
The general treatment of the Sheep of the mountainous and peaty tracts of Ireland is rude, in a degree which the breeders 
of England will find it difficult to credit. Sometimes the animals are mixed in common on the peaty mountains and flat bogs, 
where numbers of them perish from want and disease; and often they spread like wild beasts over the country, stealing what they 
can obtain: sometimes they are coupled together, and left to find their food as they may, or tethered on patches of grass and 
rushes, or kept in the miserable cabins of their owners. All over the west of Ireland, from Donegal to Kerry, are to be found 
half-starved Sheep, either straying in wild flocks, of every age and kind together, or dragging one another in couples along, or 
fastened where they can find any food. “ Our best sort,” says Mr Sampson, in his Survey of Londonderry, “ are bought either 
in the fairs of the south-western counties, or else at Dervock, to which they are driven by jobbers from those pasture counties. 
I need say nothing of them. Our own strain is of all shapes and qualities, horned and without horns, coarse woolled and fine; 
almost all are humpy-boned and restless. Not long ago, one might see hundreds of Sheep travelling from farm to farm 
unnoticed and unowned. Every servant boy in the county who had a few shillings saved, laid it out on a Sheep 01 two, which 
he let loose on the bounty of Providence, and the toleration of his neighbourhood. Towards May, all these flocks were driven to 
the mountains. In the time of snow, these depredators, like the locusts of Egypt, devoured every thing before them. 1 have lost 
at one time two thousand head of curled kale. They get no winter fodder but what they can steal.” 
These remarks applied to the smaller races of the bogs and mountains, and are still partially applicable. The long-woolled 
Sheep of the richer country are under different circumstances, and will be referred to hereafter. The means by which the more 
neglected races can be improved, are the same as in other cases have been adopted,-a system of judicious crossing, or the sub- 
stitution of superior breeds, and a better system of feeding and general treatment. 
But when we speak of defects in the husbandry of Ireland, we must remember that the removal of them is not always within 
the reach of common remedies. The evil may be seen, but the source of it may lie in the condition of the people, the state of 
property, and the relations between landlord and tenant. Six hundred years ago, Ireland was subjugated by her avaricious neig - 
hour and successive rebellions led to repeated overthrows, and to renewed plunder. The country was divided amongst the con¬ 
querors and their adherents, and for ages a great part of the disposable produce was withdrawn. Absenteeism became the habit 
of the favoured few, and at this hour, a larger tribute is thus imposed upon the industry of the country than any conqueror 
ever imposed upon a subject colony; and the country is poor, her labourers are unemployed, and her population is discontents , 
notwithstanding that she exports the largest quantity of raw produce of any country in the world. One effect results rom is 
destitution, that there is no barrier between the tenant and the demands of the receiver of rents. In England, the habits and 
condition of the people are opposed to an excessive exaction on the industry of the farmer. The Eng is i yeoman wi no ace 
land at all unless he has the means to live, and to obtain a fitting return from his capital in trade. The Irish peasant mus a e 
land in order that he may subsist, and is compelled to share his pittance with another to the uttermost residue that wi peimi 
himself to live. Hence the rents in Ireland are larger, in proportion to the means of payment, than in almost any conn ry in 
Europe While this defective relation exists between the landlord and tenant,-while the disposable produce of the and is 
expended out of the country which it should enrich, and away from the poor man whom it should employ, -while the anc is 
parcelled out in order that excessive rents may be wrung from those that till it, while the pecuniary claims o tie a 
middle men are more directly answered by means of peasants content to subsist on the scantiest pittance, than by the industry o 
tenants possessed of means to improve the land,-we must expect that the resources of the country will be imperfectly developed, 
and that poor and wretched husbandmen, as well as miserable breeds of Sheep, will possess it. 
