et farm and the mountain farm of
Lackadota, for the goodwill whereof the incoming paid the outgoing
tenants 560l. before he began the work of thorough reclamation. His
success on this hill-side has been remarkable. This season he has
taken out potatoes from eight acres at the rate of 20l. per acre, and
the triumph of his method has been equally great in other crops--to
wit, oats, mangolds, and turnips.

It is needless to remind agricultural readers that the artificial
feeding of cattle is still in its infancy in the west and south-west
of Ireland. The various kinds of cake--oil, cotton, and nut--and
cattle "spices," made up of fenugreek seed and other condiments, are,
if not unknown, quite unused by all but a few gentlemen farmers, of
whom I shall in another letter have more to say. The old-fashioned
notion was to rear cattle, turn them loose on the mountain, and sell
them to be finished in the Meaths or elsewhere. On the Millstreet
farm, however, root-crops are largely used for feeding, and the beasts
are kept more under cover than is common here. All this means, of
course, large outlay, and the farmer has expended not less than six
thousand pounds in building, and in draining and liming four hundred
acres of the eight hundred he occupies. He was, like Canon Griffin,
one of the first to recognise the necessity for changing the potato
seed, and imported "champions" before other people thought of it, and
while they were growing potatoes not much bigger than marbles, and
hardly fit to feed pigs upon, he was getting crops of fine tubers. In
draining the portion of his farm near the river, he has found himself
obliged to employ stone drains, the attempts previously made with tile
drains having failed signally; and it may be added that his attempts,
now shown to be successful, to drain the flat land near the river
Oughbane were derided by neighbouring agriculturists, who could not
see that if the land do not slope sufficiently towards the natural
drainage the artificial drains may be made to do so. His
farm-buildings, machinery for threshing, &c., are an agreeable sight.
In building, concrete has been largely used, especially in the
cow-houses and feeding stalls, and the general effect of this large
farm in county Cork is that of a well-managed business, every detail
of which is familiar to its head.

It can hardly be thought extraordinary that farmers like Mr. Hegarty,
even on a smaller scale, are anxious for a good, soun