time not bought any great quantity. The first year, 1772, he bought as much as cost him £200; the next year, 1773, £700; the next, 1774, as much as £2,000; and in 1775, above £4,000 worth: and this year, 1776, the number of buyers having much increased, he will not lay out any more than £4,000, the same as last year. This year he has also given such encouragement as to induce a person to build and establish a bleach-green and mill. The progress of this manufacture has been prodigious, for at first Lord Altamont was the only buyer, whereas for two years past there has not been less than £10,000 a year laid out at this market in linen; yet with all this increase, they do not yet weave a tenth part of the yarn that is spun in the neighbourhood. The linens made are all coarse, generally 8 to 1,100, from 9d. to 18. ld. a yard. They are double webs of 42 yards and upwards, and 32 inches wide; and they earn 1s. a day by weaving it, on an average of workmen. It is of 2 to 3 hank yarn, and the spinners earn two-pence halfpenny to three-pence halfpenny a day by spinning it. The price of it has been in 5 years gradually rising from four-pence to seven-pence a hank. All of it is spun of flax raised in the country.

The poor in general live on potatoes and milk 9 months out of the 12, the other 3 months bread and milk. All of them have one or two cows; fish is exceedingly plentiful, particularly oysters for 1s. a cart load, and sand-eels, yet they eat none; herrings, however, are an article in their food. In their domestic economy, they reckon that the men feed the family with their labour in the field, and the women pay the rent by spinning. The increase of population is very great. Lord Altamont is of opinion that the numbers have doubled on his estate in 20 years.

The farms around Westport are in general large, from 400 acres to 4 or 5,000, all of which are stock farms; and the occupiers re-let the cultivated lands, with the cabbins, at a very increased rent, to the oppression of the poor, who have a strong aversion to renting of these tierney begs. The soil in general is a cold spewy stoney clay and loam; the best lands in the country are the improved moors. Rents rise from 2s. for heath, to 16s. for good land. Average 88. about three-fifths of the country unimproved mountains, bog and lake. Great tracts of mountain, but bogs not very extensive. Clara island 2,400 acres, at £300 a year; Achill 24,000 acres, at £200 a year; Bofin

1 Innisboffin, off the coast of Galway.

£100 a year, and is above 1,200 acres. It belongs to Lord Clanrickard. The course of this country, 1. Potatoes, manured with sea-weed; this is so strong that they depend entirely on it, and will not be at the trouble to carry out their own dunghills. On the shore, towards Joyce's country, they actually let their dunghills accumulate, till they become such a nuisance, that they move their cabbins in order to get from them. A load of wrack is worth, at least, six loads of dung. They do not take half what is thrown in. On the shore, open to the Atlantic, there is a leather sort of alga, which comes in in the spring. The kelp weed grows only where it is sheltered. The coast of Lord Altamont's domain and islands let for £100 a year for making kelp.

1. Potatoes. 2. Barley 1. Potatoes. 2. Barley.

3. Oats. 4. Oats.

3. Oats. 4. Flax.

1. Potatoes. 2. Barley. 3. Oats.

Potatoes they measure by the barrel of 12 cwt. and in each barrel 16 pecks of three quarters each. They plant 10 bushels, of 3 cwt. each, at the average price of 12s. a barrel, or 1s. per cwt.

They will not carry sea weed above a mile; if dung is used, the expence will be.

A man, his wife, and four children, will eat a bushel of 3 cwt.

every week; in 39 weeks, therefore, they eat 117 cwt. or 5 ton, 17 cwt. this is just half an acre for the family. Of oatmeal, the common allowance is a quart of oatmeal a day for a labourer. A mower that is fed is allowed that quantity, and 6 quarts of butter milk a day, or as much bonny clobber. To explain what this is I must observe, that they set the milk three days for the cream to rise, and having then skimmed it, the milk that remains is as thick as blamange, and as sour as vinegar, and this is bonny clobber.

Of barley they sow 6 pecks, each 21 quarts, and the crop is generally from 20 to 30 fold, or at 25 it is 150 pecks. Of oats they sow a barrel of 24 stone per acre, and they get 6 such barrels. Of flax they sow 40 gallons, and it will sell in common on the foot at £8;. they find that it enriches the land. No wheat sown but by gentlemen for their own consumption. They burn their corn, instead of threshing it. The grazing system is generally the succession, buying in at year olds, or if the lands are very bad, two year olds; keep them till four year olds, and then sell them lean at Ballinasloe. They give 10s. 6d. to £3 10s. for yearlings; average 40s. For two-year olds, they give £3. They sell for £6 what they gave £2 and for those they gave £3 they will sell al four-year olds for £6. They keep but few sheep, but generally buy year-old wethers; hoggerills in May, at 8s. to 10s. each, shear them and turn to the mountains; bring them on to their arable lands in winter, shear them again the following year, and send them to the mountain again, and in the following summer shear again, putting them on their best pastures, and selling fat at Ballinasloe, at 15s. or 16s. their fleeces 5 lb. at 18. a pound. There are some dairies, as far as ten or twelve cows, which are employed for butter. Twenty years ago cows were lett for 1 cwt. of butter for the year, and rearing the calf. Very few swine kept, and of a bad kind.

They plough all with horses, four in a plough, directed by a man, walking backwards, who to make them move forward, strikes the beasts in the face. Young colts they harrow with by the tail. Twelve horses are necessary for one hundred acres in tillage. They winnow their corn in the road, and let the wind blow away the chaff.

CHAPTER XII.

Singularities of Mayo husbandry.-Eagles.-Holy mount.-Tuam.Moniva. Mr. French on bog-reclaiming. He introduces linen manufacture.-Tree planting.-Galway.-Sun fishery.-Mr. French at Woodlawn.-His methods of bog improvement.-Mr. Gregory at Kiltartan.

LORD ALTAMONT mentioned descriptive of Mayo hus

bandry, Acts of Parliament to prevent their pulling the wool off their sheep by hand; burning their corn; ploughing by the tail. In hiring and stocking farms, the common computation is, three rents for a grazing one. Land sells at twenty-one and twenty-two years' purchase, at rack rent. Rents have fallen within five years, 18. in the pound; they are at present on a balance, with a tendency to rise. Tythes are compounded in the lump. Leases, three lives, or thirty-one years; also twenty-one years. Much land let to those who re-let. The rents in Mayo are trebled in forty years. No emigrations. Farms are generally let in partnership, but the term Rundale' not known. Labour generally done by cottars, who have land let to them, or grass for cows, under agreement to work for the landlord. Provisions, which the poor eat, not risen, but butcher's meat doubled. They pluck their geese alive every year. All carriage done by horses with baskets: the bottoms of which fasten with sticks, and let out the load. The industry of the people very much increased; an astonishing change in industry, sobriety, &c. and are in much better circumstances in every respect, than twenty years ago. They have a practice common among them, which shews an increasing civility, in the change from Irish names to English ones. Even surnames, for instances Stranaghan, Irish for birds, which they call themselves. Markahau, Irish for a rider, which name they take; Cullane, Irish for a whelp, which name they assume; others call themselves Collins. Conree, Irish for a king, which they call them

1 See above, p. 150.

selves; Ruddery, a knight, and many others. Among Lord Altamont's labourers, is one Mowbray Seymour; his great grandfather was master-worker of the Mint at London. There are many Mortimers, Piercys, &c. and within a few years, a Plantagenet, in the county of Sligo. Eagles abound very much in this country, and do great mischief, by carrying away lambs, poultry, &c. they also watch the salmon jumping, and seize them even out of the water, by darting with that celerity, of which they are such masters; this is so common, that men with guns are set to kill and frighten them.

August 30th, rode to Rosshill, four miles off, a headland that projects into the bay of Newport, from which there is a most beautiful view of the bay on both sides; I counted thirty islands very distinctly, all of them cultivated under corn and potatoes, or pastured by cattle. At a distance, Clara rises in a very bold and picturesque stile; on the left, Crow Patrick, and to the right, other mountains. It is a view that wants nothing but wood.

August 31st, to Newbrook,' over a various country, part waste, and much cultivated. About Castle-Burk, the road crossed a most remarkable stoney natural pavement, regularly surrounded with grass trenches, all on a flat. Passed the ruins of a very fine abbey; reached Holymount,' Mr. Lindsay's, a very considerable grazier; about which place, the soil is in general, a stoney clay, from six inches to two feet deep, on limestone gravel; it is quite dry sound land, and the stones are lime-stone.

Lets from 12s. to 15s. an acre. Farms are very extensive, up to three or four thousand acres, all stock ones, with portions re-let to cottars, who are the principal arable men here. They are in the succession way, buying in year-olds at 40s. keep them till three or four-year olds, sometimes only keep them two years, they pay about 20s. per annum, on a medium. They are sold, at whatever age, for stores to the graziers in the rich countries. Another system is, to buy in cows in May, at £2 12s. 6d. to £3 and make about £1 10s. profit. A cow will take an acre; but there will be an after-grass, worth 5s. an acre, for sheep. The

1 Newbrook House, near Lough Carra, co. Mayo.

. Hollymount, about 6 miles from Ballinrobe, co. South Mayo.