the railways under their control. In a like
spirit, he addressed canal directors and
commissioners of public works. In a like
spirit, he applied to the Poor Law Commission
Office, andd procured a note to all the
Irish boards of guardians, suggesting that
the children in the workhouse schools should
be taught the injury arising from, and the
necessity for destroying, weeds on the farms
upon which, in after-life, they might be
employed. In a like spirit, this determined
thistle-hater wrote to the Commissioners of
National Education, and caused them to
instruct inspectors how to carry out the
suggestion that the children in national schools
should be trained by their respective
teachers to see the necessity of destroying
all weeds found on the farms of their parents,
or on the highways thereto adjacent. He
wrote, with like result, to the Irish Church
Education Society; and so, by help of the
two great educational bodies, hoped to put
enmity to weeds into the minds of six
hundred thousand members of the rising generation.
Mr. Donnelly sent, also, circulars with
a like purpose to the clergy of all denominations
and to every man of influence in Ireland.
Doubtless, it was by the labours of
Mr. Donnelly that the Lord Lieutenant
was lately, when at the cattle-show in
Athlone, stimulated to dwell on the importance
of resisting any further occupation of the
soil of Ireland by weeds.

Until quite of late, neglect of the duty of
weeding has been rapidly on the increase. In
eighteen hundred and fifty-three, the weeding
beside roads, canals, railway cuttings, &c., was
attended to in twenty-four cases out of a
hundred, but in the year following only in
eighteen cases. In tke former year it was
totally neglected only in twenty-nine cases
out of the hundred; but in the year following
the twenty-nine per cent, became fifty-two
per cent, of absolute neglect. The very
fertility of the ground which makes one so
desirous to see the complete development of
its resources, serves only, under a rule of
neglect, to help the tendency of ill weeds to
grow apace. More than two score of years
ago, the ground was thus described by Mr.
Wakefield:

A great portion of the soil of Ireland throws out a
luxuriant herbage, springing from a calcareous subsoil
without any considerable depth. This is one species of
the rich soil of Ireland, and is found throughout
Roscommon, in some parts of Galway, Clare, and other
districts. Some places exhibit the richest loam I ever
saw turned up with a plough; this is the case throughout
Meath in particular. Where such soil occurs, its
fertility is so conspicuous that it appears as if nature
had determined to counteract the bad effect produced
by the clumsy system of its cultivators.

Arthur Young reported upon Limerick
and Tipperary thus:

It is the richest soil I ever saw, and as such is
applicable to every wish. It will fatten the largest
bullock, and at the same time do equally well for

sheep, for tillage, for turnips, for wheat, for beans;
and, in a word, for every crop and circumstance of
profitable husbandry. You must examine into the soil
before you can believe that a country, which has so
beggarly an appearance, can be so rich and fertile.

Monsieur Moreau de Jonnes, after elaborate
examination of the agriculture of the
British islands, placed Ireland before England
and Scotland. He represented the produce
of wheat over a given space to be as twenty
in Ireland to eighteen in England and sixteen
in Scotland; of rye as thirty-two in Ireland
to ten in England and twelve in Scotland;
of barley as twenty-one in Ireland and
England to twelve in Scotland; the yield of outs
per acre being in all three countries equal.

Of the whole land again, Sir Robert Kane,
ten years ago, wrote thus:

It includes bogs and mountains. The area of bog
is two million eight hundred and thirty-three thousand
acres, of which almost all is capable of reclamation,
and of being adapted to productive husbandry, if not
required as repositories of fuel. Of the mountainy
land also, very little is beyond the domain of agricultural
enterprise. The average elevation of Ireland
above the sea is not more than three hundred and
eighty-seven feet; very little ground indeed lies above
the elevation of six hundred feet. In fact there is no
district in Ireland sufficiently elevated to thereby
present serious impediments to cultivation, and scarcely an
acre to which the term of incapable of cultivation
can be applied,

He labours indeed for a great social object
who desires, if only by the suppression of
the weeds which now cumber the fertile soil,
to add one-fourth to the productive power of
a land like this, in which noble resources
are awaiting their development. The
agricultural statistics, which are collected in
Ireland under the Registrar-General's directions,
from the voluntary statements of the tenant
farmers, prove advance in several
directions. The increase of the space allowed to
wheat crops was last year greater than
in any year before. In 'fifty-five, the breadth
of wheat sown throughout Ireland was greater
than in 'fifty-four by thirty-four thousand
acres. In 'fifty-six, the increase upon
'fifty-five was of eighty-three thousand
acres, the largest known. There was a very
slight diminution of the growth of oats,
but an increase to the extent of a hundred
and twenty thousand acres in land planted
with potatoes. There was fifty thousand
fewer acres growing barley, bere, rye, beans,
and peas, and about ten thousand acres added
to the number of those growing flax. The
total increase of ground under crops amounted
to about sixty-five thousand acres. These
are the main changes of the land. In
farming-stock there has been during the year
eighteen hundred and fifty-six an increase of
about seventeen thousand in the number of
horses kept, and a general addition of eighty
or ninety thousand to the number of the
sheep. In kine and pigs there is an
apparent decrease, mainly due to the fact
that the returns for the year were taken