1777 Tour: September

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A
T O U R, &c.
1777

UPON a second journey to Ireland this year, I took the opportunity of going from Dublin to Mitchelstown, by a route through the central part of the kingdom which I had not before sufficiently viewed.

LEFT Dublin the 24th of september, and taking the road to Naas, I was again struck with the great population of the country, and the cabbins being so much poorer in the vicinity of the capital than in the more distant parts of the kingdom. Mr. Nevill, at Furness, had, in a very obliging manner, given directions for my being well informed of the state of that neighbourhood. He is a landlord remarkably attentive to the encouragement of his tenantry. He allows half the expence of building houses on his estate, which has raised seven of stone and slate, and nine good cabbins, 35 by 16, at £27 each. He gives annually to his tenants three premiums of £7, £5 and £3 for the greatest number of trees planted in proportion to the number of their acres, and pays the hearth money of all who plant. He also allows his tenants 40 s. an acre for all the parts of their farm that want gravelling, and does the boundary fence for them, but he is paid in his rent very well for this. The following particulars I owe to his obliging attention.

THE soil in general, for some miles every way, is a lime-stone gravel, which does very well for wheat; lets at an average at 20s. that is, from 10s. to 40s. There are some tracts of green stone land, and a little clay. Rents rose till 1772, but have since rather fallen: the whole county through may be 14s. or 15s. If all now was to be let it would be 20s. Farms rise from 15 acres to 500: a middling size 250. They are now smaller than formerly, being divided as fast as leases fall. There are houses in general to all, the land lets the better for them, owing to its being a tillage country. A common farmer requires one 50 feet long, 16 wide, two stories high; a barn 40 by 16; a stable, 40 by 16; a cow-house, 50 by 14; a pig- stye, henhouse, &c. all which would cost about £300 of stone, the house slated, and would be sufficient for 250 acres of land. The courses of crops are;

1. Fallow. 2. Wheat. 3. Oats. 4. Wheat. 5. Clover.
6. Clover. 1. Potatoes. 2. Barley. 3. Fallow.
4. Wheat. 5. Clover. 6. Clover.

THEY sometimes sow wheat after potatoes: the crops are as great as after fallow; but the quality of the grain not equal. Their fallow they plough first in winter, harrow in may, cross plough in ditto and in june; stretch it (that is, form the ridges) in august making them of two bouts; harrow, and plough the seed furrow, in september; and reckon the best seed time the middle of that month. No dung in general used for it, but sometimes gravel. One barrel of seed to the acre; never weed the crop; the produce from five to twelve barrels, medium seven. Price of late years, 20s. a barrel. They thresh upon floors formed of lime, sand, and coal ashes, and are of opinion that they do not hurt the colour of the grain. At harvest they do not reap till it is quite ripe, bind directly, and form it into stacks in the field, which they leave out a fortnight. Plough the potatoe land once or twice for barley, sow a barrel an acre of 16 stone in april; medium price of late years from 7 to 12s. average 10s. Of clover they sow 21 lb. per acre, generally half clover and half trefoile; do not sow it till the barley is up, bush harrowing it; and on wheat bull harrow it, that is, with harrows without teeth. Never mow it. For oats they plough twice if able, sow two barrels per acre in march; the produce six to twelve barrels, and sometimes sixteen. Medium price for a few years past 6s. 6d. Upon some grounds that are light, pease are substituted instead of oats after wheat: plough but once, sow 20 stone on an acre under furrow, never weed them; the produce six barrels per acre, and the price 10s. No flax sown. Potatoes generally on a wheat stubble, always well dunged; the ridge seven feet, and the trench three feet wide, and to one perch in length of it, four loads of dung. Ten sacks, at twenty stone, plant an acre. March the best season; weed them, and get 100 sacks, at the medium price of 5s. the white English and apple sorts the best. It is common for the poor to hire grass land to plant them on, at £6 to £6 6s. an acre, or for stubble land dunged.

Account of an acre.
Planting	2	0	0
Seed	2	10	0
Weeding	0	10	0
Digging out	3	0	0
Rent	6	0	0
£	14	0	0
&
PRODUCE.
One hundred sacks, at 5s.	25	0	0
Expences	14	0	0
Clear profit £	11	0	0

One hundred sacks costing £14 gives the prime cost of 2s. od. a sack. They are often sold as they grow, for £16 or £18 an acre. No turnips.

LIME not generally used, Mr. Nevill has a kiln that draws 16 barrels a day. Burns with culm, at 2s. 8d. a barrel. Pays for quarrying, 2d. and burning, id. The lime costs him, at the kiln, 10d. a barrel. Lime-stone gravel more used, which lasts seven years, and on some soils longer: twelve loads on a square perch may be done for £3 an acre. Tillage is done with both horses and oxen, and which is extraordinary, the latter are used by common farmers as well as gentlemen. Six oxen or six horses in summer to a plough, or four in winter, do about half an acre a day. In the cross ploughing, which is the second, they go nine inches deep, at the other times shallower, price per acre, with a harrowing, 10s. 6d. They do not begin to mow their hay till july, get it into the large field cock in about a fortnight, which they leave out three or four weeks longer; a medium crop 12 loads an acre, at the average price of 5s. 6d. It is generally a corn country, yet are there some graziers that buy in bullocks, but more cows. Also some dairies that fatten veal for Dublin, by which they make £3 or £4 a cow; seeding them in winter when dry on straw, some on hay. They are let out to dairymen at £4 a cow. The price of milch cows, in may, £5 to £7. One acre and half will summer seed one, and half an acre of hay for winter. The sheep kept are generally ewe flocks for fattening, for Dublin market. Buy in at Ballinasloe, at 10s. to 15s. Sell the lamb in june or july at 8s. to 14s. and the ewe in november, at the same price they gave, keep them chiefly on clover. No folding. Medium price of wool, for 10 years past, 16s. they clip three to a stone. They are not at all subject to the rot. A great many hogs bred; keep them for fattening on potatoes; some are finished with offal corn and pease; in summer they seed them on clover. Mark this! one would think from more than one circumstance, that a good farmer in England was speaking.

IN hiring and stocking a farm of 200 acres, a man ought to employ £500 but some of them will do it with £200 Stock for 200 acres to have 100 acres corn, and fallow every year.

Twenty horses at £6 and ten bullocks at £5						170	0	0
Six cows at £5						300	0	0
Two sows						2	10	0
Six ploughs at 13s.						3	18	0
Three setts of geers						3	0	0
Six Cars at 25s.						7	10	0
Sundry tools, &c.						10	0	0
Seed	40	acres wheat	40	0	0
	20	oats	13	0	0
	4	barley	2	0	0
	1	potatoes	2	10	0
	10	clover	5	0	0
						62	10	0
For labour he will have three cottars for ploughing, &c. paid by land; for other work allow						40	0	0
County cess, 4d. an acre						3	10	0
Tythe,	40	wheat, 6s.	12	0	0
	20	oats 4s.	4	0	0
	4	barley 6s.	1	4	0
	10	hay 4s.	2	0	0
						19	4	0
£						352	2	0

IN respect of labour, every farmer has as many cottars as ploughs, whom they pay with a cabbin, and, one acre of potatoes, reckoned at 30s. and a cow kept through the year 30s. more. Every cabbin has one or more cows, a pig, and some poultry. Their circumstances just the same as 20 years ago. Their food potatoes and milk for nine months of the year; the other three wheat bread, and as much butter as the cow gives. They like the potatoe fare best. Some have herrings; and others 6s. to 10s. worth of beef at christmas. Sell their poultry; but many of them eat their pigs. The sale of the fowls buys a few pounds of flax for spinning, most of them having some of that employment, They are not much given to thieving, except bushes and furze, which is all they have for fuel, there being no bog nearer than that of Allen. They bring turf eight and ten miles, the price 8d. a kish of three feet and a half, by three and five long, and 1s. 2d more carriage-. A kish will last one common fire five days.

Expences of building a cabbin.

Mud walls			20	0	0
Roof,	3	pair principals	0	9	0
	4	dozen of rubberies, at 4s.	0	16	0
Labour			0	4	0
Wattles			0	6	0
Eight load of straw, 5s.			2	0	0
Thatching			0	8	0
Two doors			0	8	0
£			6	11	0
Mason's perch of a wall			0	3	0

WOMEN are paid 5d. a day, earn by spinning, 3d. A farming-man, £5 10s. a year. A lad, £1 10s. A maid, £2 to £2 10s. Reaping, 6s. 6d. Mowing grass, 2s. 6d. to 3s. Pigeons, 3d. each. Rabbits, 8d. a couple.

To Kildare, crossing the Curragh, so famous for its turf. It is a sheep walk of above 4000 English acres, forming a more beautiful lawn than the hand of art ever made. Nothing can exceed the extreme softness of the turf, which is of a verdure that charms the eye, and highly set off by the gentle inequality of surface. The soil is a fine dry loam on a stoney bottom; it is fed by many large flocks, turned on it by the occupiers of the adjacent farms, who alone have the right, and pay very great rents on that account. It is the only considerable common in the kingdom. The sheep yield very little wool, not more than 3lb. per fleece, but of a very fine quality.

FROM Furness to Shaen Castle, in the Queen's County. Dean Coote's; but as the husbandry, &c. of this neighbourhood is already registered, I have only to observe, that Mr. Coote was so kind as to shew me the improved grounds of Dawson Court, the seat of Lord Carlow, which I had not seen before. The principal beauties of the place are the well grown and extensive plantations, which form a shade not often met with in Ireland. There is in the back grounds a lake well accompanied with wood, broken by several islands that are covered with underwood, and an ornamented walk passing on the banks, which leads from the house. This lake is in the season perfectly alive with wild fowl; near it is a very beautiful spot, which commands a view of both woods and water, a situation either for a house or a temple. Mr. Dawson is adding to the plantations, an employment of all others the most meritorious in Ireland. Another work scarcely less so, was the erecting a large handsome inn, wherein the same gentleman intends establishing a person who shall be able to supply travellers, post, with either chaises or horses.

FROM Shaen Castle to Gloster, in the King's County, the seat of John Lloyd, Esq; member for that county, to whose attention I owe the following particulars, in which he took every means to have me well and accurately informed. But first let me observe, that I was much pleased to remark, all the way from Naas quite to Rosscrea, that the country was amongst the finest I had seen in Ireland, and consequently that I was fortunate in having an opportunity of seeing it after the involuntary omission of last year. The cabbins, though many of them, arc very bad, yet are better than in some other counties, and chimnies generally a part of them. The people too have no very miserable appearance; the breed of cattle and sheep good, and the hogs much the best I have any where seen in Ireland. Turf is every where at hand, and in plenty; yet are the bogs not so general as to affect the beauty of the country, which is very great in many tracts, with a scattering of wood, which makes it pleasing. Shaen Castle stands in the midst of a very fine tract. From Mountrath to Gloster, Mr. Lloyd's, I could have imagined myself in a very pleasing part of England; the country breaks into a variety of inequalities of hill and dale; it is all well inclosed, with fine hedges; there is a plenty of wood, not so monopolized as in many parts of the kingdom by here and there a solitary seat, but spread over the whole face of the prospect: look which way you will, it is cultivated and chearful.

THE King's county contains the following baronies, and annexed to their names is the value per acre of each: Clonlisk, 15s.— Ballibrit, 15s.— Eglish, 13s.— Balliboy, 10s.— Garrycastle, 13s.— Gashill, 12s.— Coolestown, £1— Warrenstown, £1 5s.— Ballicowen, 11s.— Kilcoursy, 16s.— Upper and Lower Philip'stown, 15s. In Gashill are 13,000 acres belonging to Lord Digby; and in Warrenstown is Croghen hill, famous for the great fleeces the sheep yield that are fed on it. A curragh sheep, from giving 3lb. carried there, will yield nib. but the quality is course. There are great tracts of bog in the county; and 153,000 acres that pay county charges; 170,000. acres at 15s. and 30,000 of bog. The rise of rents since 1750, more than two-thirds, but are much fallen. since 1772, in many farms 4s. in the pound. Estates through the county are remarkably divided; and are in general small. The size of farms varies much, 600 acres are a very large one; usually not less than 100; very few in partnership. There are many farms without buildings, which if divided and built, would let much better. The arable system, when burning is permitted, is to plough in the spring, very thin, then cross cut it and burn the sod as soon as the season serves, which will be some time in june; plough in the ashes very lightly, and sow turnips; these they never hoe, which is said to be difficult, on account of the number of stones; they seed the crop on the land with three-year old wethers or lambs. After this, plough it up and fallow for a second crop of turnips, which they manage as the first, but seed them earlier; then plough once, and set it to the poor for potatoes, at 61. 6s. to 61. 10s. an acre, after which they sow bere upon one ploughing; this they succeed with wheat also on one ploughing; and after the wheat, oats. Then they summer and winter fallow, which is followed by wheat and oats as before; but by this time the land is quite exhausted. A partial burning is sometimes used, which is to break up in november, and plough twice or thrice by may, and then to burn what the harrow does not reduce. For wheat they plough once, as before-mentioned in the burning course; and four times on a fallow. Sow 20 stone 10 an acre; the Crop five to six and a half barrels; the medium price of late £1 1s. a barrel. They sow a barrel of bere, of sixteen stone, the crop 14 to 23 barrels, which great produce is from the rich preparation. Of oats two barrels, or 24 stone, the crop 10 to to 16; of barley they sow 16 stone, the crop 10 to 16. The price of bere and barley, 9s. 6d. No clover at all sown, nor any grass seeds, and very few pease or beans, as they never feed their pigs or horses with either. Very little flax. There are a few bleach yards about Clara, &c. but the business is not much upon the increase. Potatoes they plant in the common trenching way; the season from the middle of april to the middle of may; more after the first of may than before it; eight barrels plant an acre; they always weed them. The apple sort is preferred from lasting longest; the medium price 2d. a stone; twenty stone the barrel.

Account of an acre.

Planting, 48 men, the first and second trench at 8d.	1	12	0
Seed, at 3s. 4d.	1	6	6
Taking up, 48 men	1	12	0
Picking up, carrying home and sorting; horse-hire only, as the family does the rest	0	8	8
Rent	6	6	0
	11	5	2
PRODUCE.
100 barrels, at 3s. 4d.	16	13	4
Expences	11	5	2
Profit	5	8	2
Prime cost, 2s. 3d. a barrel. A barrel will last a family of five persons a week.

THE turnips on the burnt land they sow from the 20th of july to the fourth of august, but a fortnight or three weeks earlier upon a fallow, the quantity of seed 1½ they never hoe; the price upon an average £3 an acre, either to take away or seed on the land, but the former rarely done; they feed them off with fat sheep or lambs, very rarely with black cattle. No lime burnt for manure, nor any lime-stone gravel used, though plenty of it found all the country through. One farmer made an experiment of them both for corn, but neither answered; the general opinion is, its being bad for the grass afterwards; there is not any marle known; the farm-yard system incomplete, as every where else, foddering in the fields; but cows are kept in the house at night, and fed with hay for about five months in the winter. Their hay grounds they wish to shut up about the 25th of march, but if their hay is finished, they are obliged to be later; mow from the 15th of july to the 15th of september, which lateness is owing to their seeding so late in the spring. They usually upon the average of weather, and management, get it into the large cock in about ten days, and leave it in that from one to two months: the medium produce per acre, two tons and a quarter, and the price 30s. a ton; the women here never make it. Tillage is performed more with horses than with horned cattle; the latter only by considerable graziers, and they are usually spayed heifers, four horses or four heifers to a plough, which do half an acre a day; the depth, from the shallowness of the soil, not more than six or seven inches; the price 7s. 6d. an acre. Very few hogs kept, not more than for mere convenience.

To hire and stock a farm will, on an average, take 40s. an acre, if a grazing one, but less in proportion to the tillage; there are men who will hire on little or no capital, this, however, is much less than formerly, from several landlords having suffered severely from it. The tillage of the whole country is very inconsiderable; it is chiefly pasturage, not one acre in fifteen is tilled; the barony of Garrey-castle has much more; one reason of there not being more, is the number of farms, from 150 to 400 acres, under leases for ever, which are so highly improved by the tenants, that they abstain from tillage, under the idea of its being prejudicial. Respecting the labour of a farm, the standing business is done by cottars; a cottar is one who has a cabbin, and an acre and a half of garden, charged at 30s. and the grass of one or two cows, at 25s. each, the daily pay 6d. the year through, the account being kept by tallies, and those charges deducted; the year's labour amounts to about 61. after the cottar's time for his potatoes and turf is deducted; the remaining 40s. is paid in money, hay, or any thing else the man wants. The cows are fed by a field being assigned for all the cottars of the farm. No instance of a cottar without a cow. The calves they rear till half a year old, and then sell them at 12s. to 20s. which will pay for the cow's hay. They keep no sheep, but every cabbin has a pig, a dog, and some poultry. No difference in their circumstances for the last fifteen years. It is here thought that it would be very difficult to nurse up a race of little farmers from the cottars, by adding land gradually to them at a fair rent; it would be also very difficult, if not impossible, to cut off the cottars from a farm; nobody would be troubled with such tenants, and no farmer would hire a farm with the poor on it independant of him, their cattle and all their property would be in constant danger; as the kingdom increases in prosperity, such ideas it is to be hoped will vanish. Their food is potatoes and milk for ten months, and potatoes […]d salt the remaining two; they have however a little butter. They sell their pig, their calf, and their poultry, nor do they buy meat for more than ten sundays in a year. Their fuel costs them about 14s. a year, eighty kish of turf an ample allowance. There is in every cabbin, a spinning-wheel, which is used by the women at leisure hours, or by a grown girl, but for twelve years 19 in 20 of them breed every second year.

Expence of a poor family.
Cabbin and garden					1	10	0
Labour in the garden					1	10	0
Two cows					2	10	0
Hay for ditto					1	10	0
Turf					0	14	0
Cloathing, 15s. a head					3	15	0
Tools					0	5	0
Hearth tax					0	2	0
£					11	16	0
The Receipt.
The year		365 days
Deduct Sundays	52
Bad weather	30
Holydays	10
		92
		273 at 6d.			6	16	6
Two calves		1	10	0
Pig		1	0	0
Poultry		0	5	0
					2	5	0
303 days spinning between the wife and daughter, at 3d.					3	15	3
					12	16	9
Expences					11	16	0
Remains for whisky, &c. &c.		£			1	0	9

Potatoes are much more the food than formerly; there are full twice as many planted. The cottars in their gardens follow the course of crops first mentioned. They are all very much addicted to pilfering: their general character idleness and dirtiness, and want of attention. They are remarkable for a most inviolable honour in never betraying each other, or even any body else, which results from a general contempt of order and law, and a want of fear of every thing but a cudgel; the reader will remember that maiming cattle, pulling down, and scattering stacks, and burning the houses of those who take lands over their heads are very well known. I am registering information, and that not from one or two persons, but several.

THE pasturage system is to buy in yearling calves, called bull chins , at from 35s. to 55s. (but twenty years ago, 22s. 9d. each), which they generally sell at Bannagher fair, when three years and an half, at £5 10s. to 61. buying and selling regularly every year. They also buy cows in may, and sell them fat in autumn, with 40s. profit. Sheep they either breed, or buy hoggits in may, at 12s to 15s. each in the fleece, and sell them fat, at three years and an half old, from £1 1s. to £1 4s. each; they get three fleeces, worth 18s. the profit 10s. ahead, keeping them three summers and two winters. No folding. Flocks rise from 100 to 2000, they calculate to keep a sheep to every acre of their farms. The fleeces, on an average of a running stock, are three to a stone of 16lb. The price, this year, 17s. 6d. twenty years ago only 9s. or 10s. Not much alteration in the number of sheep through the country. All fat ones, are in winter fed with turnips and a little hay. Their low lands rot; but being more careful than formerly, it is not so common as it was; that, with the gid , (a sudden giddiness) and the red warer, are the chief distempers they are troubled with. Milch cows are kept only for convenience, a few to every farm. An acre and half necessary to keep one the year through, but must have 1¼ ton of hay besides. One four or five years old ready for milk in the spring, sells for five or six guineas. A three years old heifer ready to calve, four or five guineas.

THE bounty on the inland carriage of flour to Dublin has occasioned the building several mills, five considerable ones; four were immediately built in consequence. The quantity of tillage has increased double in 20 years; probably from this cause, among others, has arisen the increase of whisky, the quantity of which is three times greater than fifteen years ago. Not less than 30,000 barrels of barley and bere are distilled yearly within 8 miles of Gloster. Land sells at 25 years purchase. Suppose six farms, one let for ever, at 20 years purchase, one for three lives, let 20 years ago, 25—one for two lives, ditto 28—one for one life, ditto 30—one for 31 years, 30—one to let now, 20. Average of all, 25 years. Ten years ago it would have been twenty-six and a half; twenty years ago twenty-three and a half. Leases are generally for three lives, or thirty-one years. The country in general is much improved in most national circumstances; buildings are much increased, on a larger scale, and of a far better sort than twenty years ago; there is also a rise in the price of almost all commodities. Prices not minuted in the table: Rabbits, 8d. a couple. Roasting pigs, 2s. 6d. much beyond the proportion of other things. Rise in the price of meat, 1d. a lb. in twenty years, since which bere has also advanced, from 6s. to 9s. 6d. the barrel of 16 stone. Womens labour, 4d. Wages of a farming man, £4 ditto a boy, £1 ditto a maid, £2 From 10 to 14 men reap an acre of corn in a day. Mowing grass, by the acre, 2s. 8½d. two men do it in a day. Threshing wheat, 6d. a barrel. Bere, 4d. Oats, 3d. Cutting turf, footing, &c. 12s. the 120 kish.

BUILDING.

A common cabbin, £5 Ditto of stone, £10 to £15
Walling, mason's perch work	0	0	7
One barrel lime	0	0	6
Seven load stone	0	1	1
Attendance	0	0	2
Sand and carriage	0	1	0
£	0	3	4

Five feet high, therefore 16s. 8d.

A guinea a perch, 7 feet 6 inches high. Slates, 9s. 6d. a thousand. Slating, £1 2s. 9d. a square, every thing included. Oak, 1S. 3d. a foot. Ash and home fir, 1S. Lime, five- pence halfpenny a barrel, burnt, with turf in kilns on arches; two arches burn 400 barrels, the stone large. 400 kish of turf will burn 400 barrels; price of burning and filling from £2 5s. 6d. to a guinea and half.

SEPTEMBER 30th, took my leave of Mr. Lloyd, a gentleman from whose conversation I reaped equal instruction and amusement. Passed by Shinroan, Murderinny, and Graig, to Johnstown, the seat of Peter Holmes, Esq; Much of this line a very beautiful country; near Johnstown nothing can be more picturesque, the whole well planted with hedges and little woods, and consisting of the most fanciful variety of hill, dale, and swelling declivities, upon which every bush and tree is seen to advantage.

FOR the following particulars I am indebted to Mr. Holmes, who, notwithstanding his own ability to answer every question, trusted not to it, but called in the best assistance the neighbourhood could give. Baronies in the county of Tipperary: Lower Ormond, 20s. an acre.— Upper Ormond, 20s.—Skevin, 18s.— Eliogarty, 20s.—Owen and Aira, 12s.—Clanwilliam, £1 2s. 9d. —Middle third, 25s. Besides Iffa, Offa, and Kilnemanna. The whole county on an average would now let for 20s. an acre. Rents have doubled in twenty years. Through the whole barony of Lower Ormond, the soil is in general a dry lime-stone land. Farms are large, some very large, few less than 5 or 600 acres: the size is rather increased. There are many without any buildings, and it is only from particular circumstances that they let the better for them. The small farms are taken much in partnership; a parcel of labourers will take 1 or 200 acres. The common course of tillage is,

1. Pare, and burn for turnips. 2. Turnips. 3. Potatoes. 4. Bere. 5. Wheat. 6. Oats. 7. Grey pease. 8. Fallow. 9. Wheat. 10. Oats. 11. Lay out for grass quite exhausted. Also,

l. Fallow turnips from the turf. 2. Turnips, and then as before.

THE management is to plough the sod at christmas; in april or may cross plough it, and let it dry, burn as soon as dry, which will be sometimes in may; spread the ashes, plough once, and harrow in a pound and a half or two pounds of seed to the acre, from the 20th of june to the 4th of august. They never either hoe or weed. Begin to seed them upon the land in december with fat sheep, giving three or four acres at a time to 2 or 300 sheep; and one acre to 100 sheep, giving them at the same time hay in sheep racks: a middling acre will keep 13 from christmas, to the first of april, being worth from two guineas to £3 They are also commonly used for sheep and lambs in march and april. The profit upon fat sheep, from turnips only, will amount to from 7s. to 10s. a head. The land is ploughed three times for the second crop; but the turnips are not so sweet for sheep as the first, yet they sell as well: they must be eaten off first, as they will not stand so long as the others. The poor people hire this turnip land at six guineas to £7 10s. for planting potatoes. About ten years ago the price was four guineas to £5 but the restrictions on paring and burning have lessened the quantity of it. For this potatoe crop one ploughing is given in march or april, six to eight barrels of seed planted; the favourite sorts are the apple potatoe for late, and the early wise for early use. They hand weed them carefully, and take them up the middle of november or beginning of december, the average crop 90 barrels.

Expences on an acre.

Rent	6	16	6
Seven barrels of seed, at 4s.	1	8	0
Planting, thirty men a day	0	16	0
Taking up, eighty men a day	2	0	0
£	11	0	6
PRODUCE.
Ninety barrels, at 4s.	18	0	0
Expences	11	0	6
Profit — £	6	19	6

Prime cost, 2s. 5d. a barrel.

THE culture has increased very much, and been the means of reclaiming great tracts of land, which otherwise would never have been touched. The potatoe land they plough immediately for bere, and, if the weather be dry enough, sow 14 stone per acre, and get 16 barrels. For the wheat they plough thrice; sow in november 14 stone, and get 7 barrels.

IT was in this neighbourhood Mr. Yelverton had his famous crop, which has been written so often in all the books of husbandry in Europe, but nobody here believed it. The account I had was this: that he selected the best acre in a field of 30, which he marked out; but his labourers knowing his intention, put many slooks from the adjacent parts of the field into that acre. Thus without any intentional deceit in the gentleman himself was the public completely deceived. From hence it appears, there was some reason for my proposing to the London society, to annex to their premiums for the greatest crops, the condition of reaping, threshing, and measuring all in one day, and in the presence of witnesses which they adopted much against the opinion of several gentlemen who did not approve it.

FOR the oats they plough once, sow two barrels in march, and get on an average from 10 to 14. For the pease, they plough once, sow twenty stone broad cast, are so far from hoeing or weeding, that they like to have weeds among them, by way of sticks! get six or seven barrels an acre. The succeeding fallow is ploughed four times, the crop of wheat as good as after bere, but the following oats will not yield above eight or nine barrels. The medium prices of the preceding products have of late years been, Wheat, 20s. Bere, 10s. Oats, 5s. Pease, 6s. There are very few threshing floors of wood; but they make the clay ones so hard, that they think them as good. Flax is sown only by the cottars in their gardens; very few that do not sow some. Six pottles of seed on about four perch of land. They proportion it very exactly to their own consumption; it is wove by weavers, who make it their business to weave for others; and there are very few gentlemen that do not the same for the coarse linen of their families.

MARLE and lime-stone sand are the manures used here. They have two ways of improving waste land with marle: they plough and sow oats, and marle the stubble: or else they marle at first upon the lay: this is mostly practised in the Duharrow mountains, where it has worked very great improvements. It is a grey soapy marle, sull of shells, dredged from the bottom of the Shannon. The expence of getting it, with boats and carriage into the land, 40s. an acre. Lime-stone sand is laid on at the end of an exhausting course, on the oat stubble: it costs about 50s. an acre. Very little lime used. No farm yards; the hay is stacked in the fields where it is designed to be fed, and scattered about; and shame on them, they do the same with their straw: no wonder the farm-yard system is unknown, for they sell much of their corn in the stack in the field, which gentlemen buy for the straw. Great improvements have been made in the Duharrow mountains, insomuch, that the tythes of one parish have risen from £70 a year to £400.

THE sheep in the Ormond baronies are kept chiefly for breeding; they do not sell the lambs till they become three year old wethers; give the ewes the ram at two years old, which supply the place of the old ewes, culled out and fattened at four years old, going five. In 170 there are 50 ewes, 40 lambs, 40 two year olds, 20 three year old wethers sold, 20 ewes kept, and 20 old ones sold. Ten are kept for accidents. The fat wethers sell at 20s. from grass, and 30s. from turnips; and the 20 culled ewes will sell at 20s. each; the wool of the whole, three fleeces to a stone. Mr. Robert Gowen has sold a score of four year old wethers at Dublin, for £59. Their black cattle are in the succession way. To 1000 acres, besides 1500 sheep, they will buy in 180 year old calves every year, at 45s. bought in from may to september, the right time may and june; they keep them two years and an half, selling them in november, at £6 to £8 allowing three for losses, there would be 177 calves, 177 two year olds, 177 three year olds; in all 531. Also upon 1000 acres there are two breeding mares, and six colts, ten working heifers, four car horses, and ten milch cows; there would also be 100 acres of 1000, in tillage, ten of which under turnips every year, and fifty acres of hay mown; an instance out of thousands how little attention in Ireland is paid to providing a due quantity of winter food.

MR. William Harden, thirty-two years ago, sold wool at 6s. 6d. a stone; it rose gradually for ten years to 10S. 6d. and did not get up to 15s. till about four years ago; but the price was very fluctuating, rising and falling suddenly without any evident reason; the weight of the fleeces have not encreased in thirty years, but the number of sheep is greater; turnips were commonly sown at that time. In black cattle however, there has been a great improvement, being much larger than formerly. Calves have risen in price as much as wool, such as now cost 45s. might, thirty years ago, have been had at 20s. Mr. Harden's father bought a two year old bullock for 5s. of a man now alive.

IN tillage, bullocks and heifers are generally used, four in a plough, and they do not quite half an acre a day. Three ploughs will do an acre; they stir five inches deep. The price 6s. Pairing and burning take from twelve to forty men per acre, according to the dryness of the season. Labour is done by cottars, who have a cabbin and a garden of one acre, if only one man in family, but if the son is grown, two acres. The cabbin and one acre is reckoned at 20s. also two collops, at 20s. each, which are generally cows. All this he works out at 5d. a day, extra labour six pence half penny, and eight pence in harvest. They all have from one to three pigs, , and much poultry. Their food potatoes for at least eleven months of the year, and one month of oat barley or bere bread.

Expences and receipt of a cottar family.

Cabbin, and one acre rent					1	0	0
Two cows					2	0	0
One stone of broken wool					0	14	0
Weaving it					0	3	0
Weaving their linen					0	3	0
Hearth money					0	2	0
Tools					0	5	0
Tythe of one acre					0	5	0
Hire of half an acre potatoes					3	8	0
				£	8	0	0
Receipt.
Two pigs					2	0	0
On an average of years the two cows will yield three calves in two years					2	0	0
Poultry					0	15	0
Hire —	365	days
		52	Sundays
		15	holidays
		20	bad weather
		48	sickness and their own work
	135	—
	230	at 5d.			4	16	0
					9	11	0
Expences					8	0	0
Remains for unspecified articles				£	1	11	0

IT is a general remark, that industrious and attentive men will earn £5 in the year. The circumstances of the poor are much better than they were twenty years ago, for their land and cabbins are not charged to them by gentlemen higher than they were 30 years back, while all they sell bears double the price. Potatoes are rather more cultivated and eaten than twenty years ago, and are managed better. The poor in this neighbourhood are by no means to be accused of a general spirit of thieving. It arises from holding them in too much contempt, or from the improper treatment of their superiors. No white boys have ever arisen in these baronies, nor any riots that last longer than a drunken bout at a fair: nothing that has obstructed the execution of justice. There is no objection to cutting off the cottars from a farm, and making them tenants to the landlord, upon the score of difficulty in letting a farm without cottars upon it, provided they were kept perfectly distinct by a good fence. Nor is there any doubt but out of them a race of little farmers might be gradually formed. Land at improved rents sells at 20 years purchase. Rents are doubled in 20 years; they are not fallen since 1772. Leases are usually for three lives, or thirty-one years. The interest of money has certainly risen, and the year's purchase of land fallen in twenty years; yet in the same period it is undoubted that the kingdom has improved greatly, which has the appearance of a contradiction. Buildings have very much increased in all the towns, and in a stile far superior to former periods.

TYTHES are very rarely taken in kind. Bere and wheat pay 6s. an acre. Barley and oats, 3s. Potatoes, 6s. They are generally let to proctors, who are severe to the poor, and very indulgent to gentlemen. The rigor, however, does not extend beyond those prices. The bounty on the inland carriage of corn has occasioned the building some mills, which, united with the turnip husbandry, and the vast increase of whisky, have altogether much increased tillage.

Prices not in the tables. Labour of a woman or boy in harvest, 4d. Mowing grass, 2s. 4d. to 2s. 6d. Hire of a car, a day, 1s. 3d. to 1s. 8d. Building a cabbin of stone and slate, £25 Walling the mason's perch, 4s. Lime, per barrel, 7½d. at Newagh 1s. Culm per barrel 3s. One burns nine of lime, in some places only six.

Quarrying the stones	0	0	0½
Breaking and burning	0	0	3
Culm	0	0	4
£	0	0	7½

Oak timber, 50s. to £3 a ton. Fir, 40s.

WILD ducks, 1s. 6d. a couple. Teal, 9d. ditto. Widgeon, 6d. ditto. Rabbits, 8d. ditto. Trout, 5 lb. for 1s. Salmon, 2d. per lb. Fresh water fish in general, 2½d. a lb. Oysters, 2s. per 120. The Shannon adds not a little to the convenience and agreeableness of a residence so near it. Besides affording these sorts of wild fowl, the quantity and size of its fish are amazing. Pikes swarm in it, and rise in weight to 50 lb. In the little flat spaces on its banks are small but deep lochs, which are covered in winter and in floods; when the river withdraws, it leaves plenty of fish in them, which are caught to put into stews. Mr. Holmes has a small one before his door at Johnstown, with a little stream which seeds it; a trowling rod here gets you a bite in a moment, of a pike from 20 to 40 lb. I eat of one of 27 lb. so taken; I had also the pleasure of seeing a fisherman bring three trouts, weighing 14 lb. and sell them for six-pence halfpenny a piece. A couple of boats lying at anchor, with lines extended from one to the other, and hooks in plenty from them, have been known to catch an incredible quantity of trout. Colonel Prittie, in one morning, caught four stone, odd pounds, thirty-two trouts: in general they rise from 3 to 9 lb. Perch swarm; they appeared in the Shannon for the first time about ten years ago, in such plenty that the poor lived on them. Bream of 6 lb. Eels very plentiful. There are many gillaroos in the river, one of 12 lb. weight was sent to Mr. Jenkinson. Upon the whole, these circumstances, with the pleasure of shooting and boating on the river, added to the glorious view it yields, and which is enough at any time to chear the mind, render this neighbourhood one of the most enviable situations to live in that I have seen in Ireland. The face of the country gives every circumstance of beauty. From Killodeernan- hill, behind the new house building by Mr. Holmes, the whole is seen to great advantage. The spreading part of the Shannon, called Loch Derg, is commanded distinctly for many miles; it is in two grand divisions of great variety. That to the north is a reach of five miles leading to Portumna. The whole hither shore a scenery of hills, checkered by inclosures and little woods, and retiring from the eye into a rich distant prospect. The woods of Doras, belonging to Lord Clanrickard, form a part of the opposite shore, and the river itself presents an island of 120 acres. Inclining to the left, a vale of rough ground, with an old castle in it, is backed by a bold hill, which intercepts the river, and then the great reach of 15 miles the bay of Sheriff, spreads to the eye, with a magnificence not a little added to by the boundary, a sharp outline of the county of Clare mountains , between which and the Duharrow hills , the Shannon finds its way. These hills lead the eye still more to the left, till the Keeper meets it, presenting a very beautiful outline that sinks into other ranges of hill, uniting with the Devil's Bit. The home scenery of the grounds, woods, hills, and lake of Johnstown, is beautiful.

MR. Holmes has practiced agriculture upon an extensive scale, and not without making some remarks, which will be of use to others. He has not for five or six years past been without a small field of Scotch cabbages. The seed he sows both in march and autumn for use at different seasons; the rows he plants three feet asunder and two feet from cabbage to cabbage. He has used them for fat sheep and fat cattle, but principally for weaned calves: they have answered perfectly well In all, but remarkably so with the calves, of which Mr. Holmes has had the best in the country, and singly from being thus fed. His people were all of opinion, that a good acre of cabbages will go as far as two acres of turnips, worth each £3. Two years ago a violent frost stopped the use of turnips, and he then found the benefit of cabbages prodigiously great. He has always manured for them with dung or marle, the former best.

RAPE CAKE,

MR. Holmes has used as a manure, with great success: in 1775, he dressed two acres of worn out meadow, with a ton and a half an acre, at £2 2s. per ton; and in 1776, he laid on seven tons, at 1¼d. per acre; the first trial was made too late, and a dry season coming, the effect was not great. The last year it was laid on the fifth of april, when the effect was remarkably great: it threw up a most luxuriant crop of the finest herbage, insomuch, that he is convinced nothing can answer better, and is determined to extend the practice considerably. He has tried it on low, wet, and on upland, and the effect infinitely greater on the latter. In the same field, Mr. Holmes fed 150 sheep some months, on the produce of seven acres of turnips, going over nine acres of grass; the benefit to the latter did not near equal that of the rape, except in the destruction of moss, which was destroyed by both methods.

CLOVER, (trifolium pratenst) . /p>

MR. Holmes has used this grass these six years; he began with six acres, and has extended it as far as seventeen last year: sows 24 lb. of seed per acre. The crops as good as he has seen in England; has mown it twice, but now seeds the second growth. He has tried it on dry lime-stone hills, which are slow in coming to grass, but answer well in clover. For his sheep he finds it of great use. Ewes lamb here about the 17th of march, and when turnips are done, want the clover very much: also in keeping fat sheep for a late market. Course of crops,

1. Turnips on old turf, two ploughings and a slight burning. 2. Turnips. 3. Barley, yielding 18 barrels. 4. Clover. 5. Clover. 6. Wheat, yielding 8 barrels. 7. Oats, ditto 15. Also,

1. Manure a stubble for cabbages. 2. Potatoes. 3. Barley, 20 barrels. 4. Clover. 5. Clover. 6. Wheat. 7. Oats.

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