onstructed at about the same price as
corrugated iron. Those fond of tracing the genius of a nation in its
constructive faculty will probably be amused at finding that the
latest work of structural genius in Kerry is a development of that
mud-hut order of architecture which has existed here from pre-historic
times. But concrete well employed is a very different thing from the
dirt-pie or mud-hut idea at the other end of the evolutionary chain.

Mr. Chute, of Chute Hall, is also an improver and architectural
reformer, his efforts being directed towards the abolition of thatch
in favour of slate, an idea which has proved more fortunate in his
case than in that of the great-grandfather of the present Lord
Kenmare. The great estates of the Lord Chamberlain have curiously
enough been equally damaged by the care and carelessness of his
ancestors. His great-grandfather was disgusted at the condition of the
town of Killarney, and offered any tenant who would build a decent
house with a slate roof a perpetual lease of the land it stood upon
and the adjoining garden for a nominal rent of four shillings and
fourpence per annum, without other important conditions. The result
has been that Killarney can boast of as filthy lanes as any in London
or Liverpool. The ordinary process, the same as that which formed the
hideous slums between Drury-lane and Great Wild-street, now happily
demolished, has gone on in Killarney. Tenants under no restrictions
gradually converted their gardens into lanes of hovels, and made money
thereby, and the result is a concentration in Killarney of filth which
would be better distributed on the side of a mountain, and which is
under the nose of a landlord who is powerless to apply a remedy.

Not long ago Lord Kenmare sought to establish what is called here a
Temperance Hall, for the purpose of giving lecturers and entertainers
a chance of amusing the people; but the proprietor of the ground,
after a prolonged negotiation, declined to surrender his property.
Killarney is in the hands of the dwellers therein, and a very poor
place it is.

Conversely Lord Kenmare's property suffers severely from the
recklessness of the ancestor who flourished in the "comet year,"
famous for hock. That spirited nobleman, averse to the nuisance of
dealing directly with tenants, leased a large portion of his property
to middlemen in 1811 for forty-one years or three lives; that is to
say, for a minimum of forty-one years with