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uncommon woodland scene in Ireland. Found the widow Holland's inn, at Cashel, clean and very civil. Take the road to Urlingford. The rich sheep pastures, part of the famous golden vale, reach between three and four miles from Cashel to the great bog by Botany Hill, noted for producing a greater variety of plants than common. That bog is separated by only small tracts of land from the string of bogs which extend through the Queen's County, from the great bog of Allen; it is here of considerable extent, and exceedingly improvable. Then enter a low marshy bad country, which grows worse after passing the sixtysixth milestone, and successive bogs in it. Breakfast at Johnstown, a regular village on a slight eminence, built by Mr. Hayley. It is near the spa of Ballyspellin.

Rows of trees are planted, but their heads all cut off, I suppose from their not thriving, being planted too old. Immediately on leaving these planted avenues, enter a row of eight or ten new cabins, at a distance from each other, which appear to be a new undertaking, the land about them all pared and burnt, and the ashes in heaps.

Enter a fine planted country, with much corn and good thriving quick hedges for many miles. The road leads through a large wood, which joins Lord Ashbrook's plantations, whose house is situated in the midst of more wood than almost any one I have seen in Ireland. Pass Durrow; the country for two or three

miles continues all inclosed with fine quick hedges, is beautiful, and has some resemblance to the best parts of Essex. Sir Robert Staple's improvements join this fine tract. They are completed in a most perfect. manner, the hedges well grown, cut, and in such excellent order that I can scarcely believe myself to be in Ireland. His gates are all of iron. These sylvan scenes continue through other seats, beautifully situated amidst gentle declivities of the finest verdure, fullgrown woods, excellent hedges, and a pretty river winding by the house. The whole environs of several would be admired in the best parts of England.

Cross a great bog, within sight of Lord de Vesci's plantations. The road leads over it, being drained for that purpose by deep cuts on either side. I should apprehend this bog to be among the most improvable in the country. Slept at Ballyroan, at an inn kept by three animals who call themselves women; met with more impertinence than at any other in Ireland. It is an execrable hole. In three or four miles pass Sir John Parnel's, prettily situated in a neatly dressed lawn, with much wood about it, and a lake quite alive with wild fowl.

Pass Monstereven, and cross directly a large bog, drained and partly improved; but all of it bearing grass, and seems in a state that might easily be reduced to rich meadow, with only a dressing of lime. Here I got again into the road I had travelled before.

I must in general remark, that from near Urlingford to Dawson Court, near Monstereven, which is completely across the Queen's County, is a line of above thirty English miles, and is for that extent by much the most improved of any I have seen in Ireland. It is generally well planted, has many woods, and not consisting of patches of plantation just by gentlemen's houses, but spreading over the whole face of the country, so as to give it the richness of an English woodland scene. What a country would Ireland be had the inhabitants of the rest of it improved the whole like this!

PART II.

SECTION I-Soil, Face of the Country, and Climate.

To judge of Ireland by the conversation one sometimes hears in England, it would be supposed that onehalf of it was covered with bogs, and the other with mountains filled with Irish ready to fly at the sight of a civilised being. There are people who will smile when they hear that, in proportion to the size of the two countries, Ireland is more cultivated than England, having much less waste land of all sorts. Of uncultivated mountains there are no such tracts as are found in our four northern counties, and the North

Riding of Yorkshire, with the eastern line of Lancaster, nearly down to the Peak of Derby, which form an extent of above a hundred miles of waste. The most considerable of this sort in Ireland are in Kerry, Galway, and Mayo, and some in Sligo and Donegal. But all these together will not make the quantity we have in the four northern counties; the valleys in the Irish mountains are also more inhabited, I think, than those of England, except where there are mines, and consequently some sort of cultivation creeping up the sides. Natural fertility, acre for acre over the two kingdoms, is certainly in favour of Ireland; of this I believe there can scarcely be a doubt entertained, when it is considered that some of the more beautiful, and even best cultivated counties in England, owe almost everything to the capital, art, and industry of the inhabitants.

The circumstance which strikes me as the greatest singularity of Ireland is the rockiness of the soil, which should seem at first sight against that degree of fertility; but the contrary is the fact. Stone is so general, that I have great reason to believe the whole island is one vast rock of different strata and kinds rising out of the sea. I have rarely heard of any great depths being sunk without meeting with it. In general it appears on the surface in every part of the kingdom; the flattest and most fertile parts, as Limerick, Tipperary, and Meath, have it at no great

depth, almost as much as the more barren ones. May we not recognise in this the hand of bounteous Providence, which has given perhaps the most stony soil in Europe to the moistest climate in it? If as much rain fell upon the clays of England (a soil very rarely met with in Ireland, and never without much stone) as falls upon the rocks of her sister island, those lands could not be cultivated. But the rocks are here clothed with verdure; those of limestone, with only a thin covering of mould, have the softest and most beautiful turf imaginable.

Of the great advantages resulting from the general plenty of limestone and limestone gravel, and the nature of the bogs, I shall have occasion to speak more particularly hereafter.

The rockiness of the soil in Ireland is so universal that it predominates in every sort. One cannot use with propriety the terms clay, loam, sand, &c.; it must be a stony clay, a stony loam, a gravelly sand. Clay, especially the yellow, is much talked of in Ireland, but it is for want of proper discrimination. I have once or twice seen almost a pure clay upon the surface, but it is extremely rare. The true yellow clay is usually found in a thin stratum under the surface mould, and over a rock; harsh, tenacious, stony, strong loams, difficult to work, are not uncommon : but they are quite different from English clays.

Friable, sandy loams, dry but fertile, are very

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