The Sun.
London, England, 1861-10-03 00:00:00

AGRICULTURAL PROGRESS OF

IRELAND.

LONDONDERRY, SEPTEMBER.

In Tyrone and Derry the occupier of a3O acre or
average sized farm lives on his holding in a good
house, with sitting-room, beside kitchen and dairy,
and three bedrooms; he has a stable for two or
three horses, a house for a few cows, a barn, and
perhaps a cart-shed. Many have fixed horse-power
thrashing mills ; in one parish are more than 20,
most of them upon farms of about 40 acres each.
Portable steam-machines, however, are wanted.
Iron swing ploughs and harrows have become uni-
versal ; and grubbers, either Tenant's or similar
implements, are used for cleaning between potato
rows and for crossing ploughed land. At the Lon-
donderry meeting three years ago one Scotch firm
sold £4,000 worth of implements. Green crops arc
sown by the drill, but grain generally broadcast ;
and the autumn-cleaning of stubbles, begun by the
larger and more advanced farmers, is being followed
by the smaller cultivators, when they perceive
how potatoes may be thus planted early in March,
and ripen before the disease has attained its full
virulence. The first crop after the lea is oats ; then
the manured green crop, swedes, mangolds, which
are few in this chill, wet latitude, or potatoes ;
these set in drills or ridges. The roots are not fed
off by sheep, the wetness of the ground and the
climate being thought unadapted for them ; but.
perhaps, the principal reason may be that this is a til-
lage, flax, and butter country, and the farmers have
never been flock-masters. Then comes flax, the
peculiar feature in thelhusbandry of these northern
districts. It is not manured for, because the crop
would grow too rank and be spoiled ' • yet the land
must be in good heart. Neither is flax thought an
exhausting crop, and, if a full heavy yield, is
cleansing to the land. It is pulled when the straw
is in the best condition for fibre, which is before the
seed is ripe, and, no means of artificial drying of
the green seed for feeding purposes having been
adopted, an immense value is every year sacrificed
by steeping it in the straw—being thus entirely
wasted, except by some of the most thrifty farmers.
Yet in Flanders and Courtray, whence the best flax
is imported, the seed is saved. The flax straw,
steeped in ponds, and dried upon grass, is taken to
neighbouring mills to be scutched and made ready
for Strabane, Derry, and other markets, there being
very many of these small water-power mills, em-
ploying some four to eight men each, and commonly
attached to farms. The old-fashioned open-air
steeping and spreading yield a better fibre than is
obtained by Selienck's hot-water retting ; and
Watts's still more modern steaming process has
other objections, arising in the manufacture of the
linen. Some 140,000 acres of flax are grown in Ire-
land, mainly in the northern counties, and vet only
partially supply the Belfast factories. In England,
where a peculiarly fine quality is obtained, the cul-
ture would probably be greatly extended had the
farmer some means simpler than the tiresome
steeping and scutching of reducing the bulk
and weight of the crop for carriage to market; and
Messrs. Rowan, of Belfast, have lately brought out
a novel and successful, yet cheap machine for this
purpose. Flax is a precarious, but generally a pay-
ing, and frequently a lucrative crop—realising from
£5 up to, and exceeding, £25 per acre. After it oats
or wheat is taken, the latter yielding 1,50 to 100
stones per statute acre on an average, the weight
Glib, per bushel. The grain crop is laid down with
clover or ryegrass, &c., which is mown for hay one
year, grazed another, and then broken up for oats.
The small farmers are wonderfully frugal and in-
dustrious, themselves and their families doing most
of the farm work, and some having in addition
boarded servants, others employing a labourer or
two. They pick up every rural penny from milk,
butter, poultry, eggs; they are devoted to careful
husbandry and housewifery, eager to save; only the
more important farmers living above the customary
fare of potatoes, oatmeal, Indian corn, stirabout, a
few herrings, and an occasional treat of bacon or,
perhaps, real butchers' meat. The class is thriving,
and many individuals, occupying their 20 acres of
ground, have their few hundred pounds out at intc-
rest, and aro on the look-out for an additional farm.
The common rent for fair tillage land is 255. to 30s.
per Cunningham acre, which obtains here—equiva-
lent to 20s. to 235. per statute acre—the landlord
paying the tithe; so that this fine district might
be considered as much under-rented. Then another
circumstance in favour of the tenant is that, in
most 'cases, lie enjoys security of tenure without
being burdened with restrictions as to manage.
ment. The smallest holdings, rented below £l2
or £l4 a year, are not under lease, at least not on
the Marquis of Abercorn's property ; above this,
perhaps, two out of three have leases; and good
land, or a large farm, is seldom held from year to
year. A lease for 21 years, or 31 years, or 31
yearn and a life, specifics that a tenant shall pay
his rent ; it reserves minerals and game (of
which there is very little in the country), and for-
bids subletting ; but no covenants stipulate how
he shall crop, in Ivlia.t rotation he shall leave his
farm, or even that he shall manage in a business-
like manner. But the usage of the country gives
the outgoing tenant a compensation for improve-
merit, and, should the landlord find his ground
damaged and left "a caplet mortuunt," " the law is I
open ; let them implead one another." Could farms
of sufficient magnitude be obtained on these terms,
the tenants would consider themselves in a very in-
dependent position indeed. And tenants-at-will are
rarely turned out except for non-payment of rent,
or occasionally when a property changes hands : and
eons almost invariably succeed their fathers.
We have mentionedeompensation for unexhausted