e
to think of the risks run by an improving tenant in county Cork, and
an improving tenant Mr. Hegarty assuredly is.

It is a curious illustration of that difference between English and
Irish farming which makes the agrarian question so difficult for
Englishmen to understand, that Mr. Hegarty, who may be accepted as a
type of the Irish farmer, possessed by advanced ideas, conducts his
operations successfully and profitably by almost exactly reversing the
proportions of tillage and pasture existing on Mr. Clare Read's famous
farm at Honingham Thorpe. On the particular farm of Mr. Read's here
referred to, the quantity of pasture is about one eighth or ninth of
the whole. On Mr. Hegarty's farms, for he has more than one to make up
his total of eight hundred acres, there is exactly one-ninth under
tillage to eight-ninths of pasture.

This will not at first strike the English eye as any great thing in
the way of reclamation; but it must be recollected that in this part
of Ireland it is no small matter to obtain good pasture. One of the
first sights the eye becomes accustomed to is the long bent or sedge,
shooting rankly up among the sweeter grass, and telling surely of land
overcharged with water. There is no escape from the fact that Ireland
as a country is cursed with defective natural drainage. The fall of
the greater rivers is so slight that they meander hither and thither
in "S's," as they say here, and only require a little surplus on the
average rainfall to overflow the more valuable land. And it is
astonishing how quickly good land left untilled reverts to its
primeval condition, or, in the expressive language of the country,
"goes back to bog." This has been shown in many cases.

There is, for instance, a not small portion of Lord Inchiquin's and
Lord Kenmare's land, which has been allowed by the tenants to
gradually go back to sedge, if not to bog, for the want of keeping
drains clear and putting on lime. A curious instance of the effect of
not liming the land is supplied on one of the fields newly reclaimed
by Mr. Hegarty. Owing either to the supply of lime running short, for
the moment, or to the carelessness of his men, a patch of recently
drained land was left without lime which was liberally bestowed on the
rest of the field. The forgotten patch can be seen from afar by the
tufts of sedge sprouting from it.

Mr. Hegarty's eight hundred acres are, saving one or two little lots,
divided between the Millstre