re the main articles of diet, and
after the potato harvest is used up American meal, ground from maize,
and American bacon of the worst possible kind take their place. The
bacon of their own pigs is far too expensive for them to eat. The maize
flour serves also as fodder for the live stock, and the oats which are
grown are-eaten as gruel by the people as well as by the animals which
they rear. The Congested Districts Board was established to remedy, as
far as possible, this state of things--primarily by reorganising
tenancies and amalgamating them into economic holdings, and at the same
time enlarging them by the purchase of untenanted land, followed by its
addition to existing tenancies. The slowness of its operations is seen
from the fact that after fourteen years it had purchased less than
240,000 acres, of which three-quarters were untenanted land, while the
whole extent of the congested districts is more than three and a half
million acres. In justice to the Board, however, one must add that it
has concerned itself with many other branches of rural economy--notably
the improvement of the breed of horses, cattle, and pigs, the sale at
cost price of chemical manures and seed, the making of harbours and
roads, and the sale on instalment terms of fishing boats.

It is impossible to exaggerate the work done by the Board on the Dillon
estate in Counties Mayo and Roscommon and in Clare Island. But when one
reads in the Report for 1906--the fifteenth annual report of the
Board--that since its establishment the Board has enlarged 1,220
tenures, re-arranged 537, and created 220, and realises, further, that
there are in Ireland 200,000 uneconomic holdings, one may well ask what
are these among so many?

Under the Act of 1903 the Board's purchases are financed by the Land
Commission, and the results are to be seen in an acceleration of
purchases, for while in the twelve years 1891 to 1903 the Board had
bought about 200,000 acres, of which less than 45,000 were unlet land,
in the three years from November, 1903, to the end of March, 1905, the
acreage bought was over 160,000 acres, of which 48,000 were unlet, and
negotiations were in progress for the transfer of another 100,000 acres,
of which 20,500 were unlet.

Under the Act, however, in the case of "Congested Estates," which are
defined as those in which one-half at least of the holdings are of
valuation of L5 or under, or which consist of mountain or bog, the Land
Commiss