sufficiently with the roots of grass to retain the earth, this process is repeated preparatory to a renewal of this scourging system. I beg again to repeat that in most cases I am a warm advocate for restricted burning of land. Did landlords pay more attention to their estates, or did agents reside, and could be brought to consider that they have more duties to perform than the mere receipts of rents, much of this injury to land would be prevented. It has been a practice with some landlords to receive a large sum of money in hand for permission to wealthy middlemen to let large farms for burning, to poor people, at exorbitant rents; I do not know a fairer ground for breaking a lease, by the heir at law, and making this destructive tenant disgorge some of his ill-got wealth; however, this practice is not so prevalent as formerly; the mother of invention is often the mother of improvement.

On the sea coast, sea weeds (Algae) and coralines of various kinds, are their never-failing resources; on this manure they plant potatoes, which are followed by a crop of wheat, oats, and in sandy soils barley,* and then potatoes with a fresh manuring again. Potatoes produced from sea weed are, if planted early, as good as those produced by any other kind of manure; but if planted late, are generally wet, which is the case often with other manures. In many places on the sea coast, very fine early potatoes called Windeleers (the same I believe as the county of Wicklow Bangers) are produced in several feet depth of pure sea sand, manured by sea weed, and after that fine barley, which is all consumed by the innumerable private stills of Cunnamara. A considerable portion of the tillage of cottiers is

F 2

The Irish had not originally barley or rye.

effected by the spade, and they scarcely ever fallow: their rents are too high, and their patch of land too small, to admit that wasteful practice; it is also the practice with some gentlemen to dig in oats in spring, and where the ground is too wet to plough with safety,

for those who permit such ploughing as I have often seen, it is a safe practice, however expensive. But why should any man of fortune have wet land, or permit bad tillage?

On Mr. Lawrence's estate, and elsewhere, the tenants plant potatoes in furrows made by the plough; they first spread a small quantity of manure on the surface, and plough it in, then throw it into furrows, in which they plant the potatoes; in a few days they second spit, and finish with a shovel; by this means they avoid the necessity of bringing up a quantity of bad earth; but in wet land the furrows between the ridges should be well dug, without throwing any part on the surface; this practice permits the wet to percolate, and if steadily persisted in, would prevent the necessity of throwing lac liagh (a clay) soils into high ridges, by which means, on many estates, one-third of the soil is unoccupied, and is a very material cause of the difficulty of paying rents.

EXTENT OF CULTURE AND OF EACH SPECIES OF GRAIN SOWED.

There is a vast deal more corn produced in this county than a cursory view of it would lead one to think. In the rocky districts, where walls are almost exclusively the fence, and the enclosures small, the corn is seldom seen from the road, yet in these patches is produecd most excellent wheat; the flour millers prefer it to that produced in deeper and stronger soils, as having a thinner skin, and though not so large a

grain, producing more and better flour. The oats and barley produced in these calcareous soils partake of the valuable qualities ascribed to the wheat; but from a general neglect of landlords in providing good seeds for their tenants, are greatly inferior to what they would be both in quality and quantity of produce. If the same benign spirit actuated them that has so materially improved the live stock of the county, by giving gratis the best sires of each kind, an increase and improvement beyond conception would be the result, more especially as this county has lately become a considerable exporting one. It would be much for the advantage of the corn merchants in Galway if they pursued the enlightened practice of Messrs. Persse, late proprietors of the Newcastle brewery, of importing the very best of each kind of grain, and selling them at first cost, there can be little doubt it would be fully repaid to them in a more ample and better produce to their stores, and do away that disgraceful stigma we perceive laid on Irish corn in every market note from Liverpool, where it is rated even lower than that produced in Scotland; and it must be highly gratifying to their feelings when they perceive the beneficial effects of their exertions.

In the neighbourhood of Oranmore, parish of Kilcolgan, Tartarian oats are very generally cultivated; they are esteemed better for light impoverished soils, and are said to give nearly half meal. In almost every part of this county a variety of very bad black oats makes a large proportion of the crop, and as the poor people have not better for seed, the evil is increasing: they say that the best potato oats become black in their ground; this I very much doubt,—but that it proceeds from a careless mixture of the corn. Crops of every kind in the lands of cottiers are generally carefully weeded, as I have often seen with pleasure in my rides through the

country; and if indolence forms any part of the character of the inhabitants of this county, it is certainly not in the lower ranks it will be found, when working for themselves.

There have been few improvements made in agriculture until very lately, indeed until Farming Societies were established, and they are still too much confined to the demesnes of men of fortune; to become general, the smaller landed proprietors must be induced to shake off their old prejudices, and turn their eyes to those gentlemen's seats, where they will see two horses in a plough without a driver, ploughing much deeper and better in every respect than they do with four horses, two leaders, and frequently a lazy fellow keeping or pretending to keep the plough in the ground by pressing on the beam with a pitchfork. I must confess were I a landed proprietor I should blush at seeing such practises, and much more if some of our travelling agriculturists from Great Britain were witnesses of such disgraceful practices. Why should not every landed proprietor have a little farming society on his estate ?— Could he lay out a very few pounds with more advantage? I regret to state I have more than once heard, "I do not care a damn what they do, or how dirty their houses are, so I receive my rents." Can there be a stronger proof of the little interest they take, than that little or no advantage has been taken of the liberal offer of the Farming Society of Ireland, of ploughs of the best construction, iron and wood, at very reduced prices, for the use of their tenants. Did a proper feeling actuate them, a great addition of carpenters would be necessary at the implement manufactory.

Like most parts of Ireland, tillage is despised in those districts where grazing prevails; yet a doubt does not remain on my mind, that the richest land would be

more profitably employed in a union of tillage with grazing; but where tillage is practised, it is almost uniformly the scourging system that is pursued, without the intervention of an ameliorating green crop; yet this is the tillage which I have frequently heard put into the scale against grazing, or in other words, the most execrable tillage with the best grazing. How blind to their own interest must those farmers be who pursue this wretched system of deterioration, yet what better can be expected when men of large fortune and liberal education, seeing only through the eyes of an ignorant prejudiced steward of the old school, permit their lands to be scourged in this barbarous manner. How can it be expected their tenantry will make any change, when I assure my readers that more than once or twice I have heard the hackneyed cant of the common labourers used by those men of large fortune, and otherwise liberal education, "I wonder how our fathers and grandfathers did when these fine improvements were not thought of." And sometimes from those men who, by the industry of their ancestors, an extraordinary coincidence of fortunate circumstances, or from an unfeeling disposition, taking every advantage of the distresses of the poor, have jumped into a large fortune, and perhaps possess many rich grazing farms for a few shillings per acre, men of a plodding penurious disposition, and so rich that their frequent losses can never be known by the usual signs, those are the men that are compared with your New light farmers, as they are sneeringly called; men, who if they had the same capital, and farms at the same reut of the drones, would not only enrich themselves, but greatly improve their country. Graziers are seldom improvers of land; they are ready enough to build wall enclosures, but as to draining, many of them laugh at it. The prosperity of