The Sun.
London, England, 1861-12-25 00:00:00

as the rain has been falling continuously from the middle
of June nearly up to the present time, it is obvious that the
'turf cut in th t beginning of June has had no chance of dry-
ing. 7'he pc .'pie are erdeo.vouring to burn the wet turf to-
gether with brambles, heath, futae, and straw, but they are
not Ale to do much good in this way. I have seen turf
purchased at double the ordinary price, which was almost
useless, and could not be made available unless bullied
with coals, Every sod was thoroughly saturated with
moisture, and resembled a wet sponge more than any-
thing else. Connemara, like the coasf of Clare, suffers
from the want of turf the more intensely because of the
absence of trees. The country is perfectly bare of wood,
except the small plantations that surround a few houses
in sheltered places; and this is the more extraordinary
when we find from the abundance of fir trees in the bogs
that the whole of the land must at one time -have4men, a

vast forest. The inhaLitants of Sellerney and other ,laces
have nothing wherewith to cook their food save the Nrns,

furze, and logwood which they pick up from day to day.
Some of them are taking the old straws off he roofs of their
houses and burning them ; others are carrying away the

turf walls by which the roads are fenced, and resorting to

any shift and contrivance which urgent necessity can sug-
gest to procure the materials of a miserable fire. This is a
sad state of things, and matters will be worse if active mea-

sures be not taken to supply the people with coals until the

dry winds, with which we hope to be favoured in March,
enable them to obtain turf from the bogs. The Clifden Re-
lief Committee are awaiting a favourable change in the
weather to obtain a cargo of coals for the supply of the
town and its neighbourhood. Their funds must, how-

ever, be greatly increased by subscription from the public
at large before thy can expect to deal effectually with
the immense amount of distress occasioned by the un-

precedented scarc:ty of fuel. I have read a letter in
the London Morning Fost, in which the writer notices

_ .
my correspondence from the West of Ireland as being
likely to do some good, but also likely to mis-
lead the half-educated and selfish politicians who lay
the blame on the clouds of the Atlantic, or anything

rather than the real cause. I hope nothing I have written
is calculated to produce that effect. The object of my mis-

sion is to ascertain the amount and intensify of the distress
occasioned by what is acknowledged on all hands to be a
deficient harvest. The causes of this distress, and the
means whereby such results are to be averted in future, are
not subjects which I am called on to investigate very deeply.
Nevertheless, I have not hesitated to attribute much of the

calamities that have befallen the farmers of ;the West this
year to their own bad methods of cultivation, and to the
want of drainage which I perceived in every part of the
country through which I passed. I stated in one of my
earlier letters that Mr. Allan Pollok, of Lismany, Ballina-
sloe, had succeeded in growing good crops, notwithstanding
the extraordinary wetness of the season, because his land
was thoroughly drained and skilfully cultivated ; and I have
frequently mentioned instances in which earlier and better
culture has been rewarded with success when failure was
(he general rule, arising from ignorance of the principles
anti practice of scientific agriculture. I have, therefore,
shon no disposition to slur over the defects which are but
w too bbiervable in the cultivation of the soil throughout the
Wes of Ireland. Dealing with matters as I found them, I
attrai ted the admittedly bad crops of the present year to
the i clemency of the season ; but I did not suggest that
if th land were properly drained and better cultivated (as
it veo
t
ld have been if it formed a portion of England or
Scotland) the result would have been so unfavourable as it
has unfortunately proved. Considering the present state
Of, Iri4l agriculture, to what cause can we attribute the
total loss of the turf, the aggravation of the potato blight,
and the deterioriation of the cereal crop, if not to the
" clouds of the Atlantic" obstructing the vivifying influx
ence of the sun, chilling the atmosphere, and deluging
the land with rain ? It is true more forethought and less
indolence of thought and action on the part of the people
might have diminished the intensity of the evil, but as long
as the present minute subdivision of land prevalis in
Ireland no human ingenuity or labour could avert from
the poorer classes a great amount of privation consequent
on such a spring and summer as we have had. I
agree with the correspondent of the Morning Post
in some of his assertions, the force of which I fully
recognise, while I dissent from others. Whether seaweed
be good for land in an open question, but where there is
nothing else it must still be resorted to. It promotes the
growth of the first crop when judiciously applied, but I'
have heard it said. that it makes the land thin and poor—in
fact eats away the soil. However, the people living along'
the coast of Connemara and Clare have no other manure.
Sea-weed, however objectionable in some respects, is within
their reach, whilst they have no means of procuring farm-
yard and artificial manures. There cannot be any doubt
that sea-weed is bad, for potatoes, it makes them wet and
ill-tasted. I mentioned in a former letter that the people of
Connemara deferred the planting of their potatoes until a
later period than usual, in consequence of the sterMY
weather, which prevented them from cutting the sea-
weed on the rocks. I have been told by persona
who have had some experience on this subject, that it
was not necessary to defer the planting until the com-
ing in of the sea-weed. They should have planted-:
them in ridges without it not deeply covered, and
when the sea-weed came in have spread it over the ridges,
and covered it up at the second earthing or moulding, when
the plant was making its first appearance through the
ground. 1 understand this has been practised with success
in Mourne, in the county of Down. Anytimeafter the
potatoes have been planted, until they are just issuing
through the mould, will answer; and by adopting this sys-
-1 tern an additional month or six weeks will be gained for col-
lecting and applying the manure. The correspondent of the
ruing Post speaks of bogwood as a substitute for turf.
..e is used in that way at present throughout every part of
the country I have visited, but it is exceedingly scarce and
dear. Perhaps the writer of the letter to which I have re-
ferred
is not aware of the labour and difficulty in procuring
this article, sunk six or seven feet below the surface of the
wet bog, which must be cleared away so as to allow a suffi-
cient space around the block to admit the man with his good
hatchet (made purposely for this work) to chip it away, for
otherwise it could not be removed out of its bed without an
enormous expenditure of labour. Formerly begdeal was
used for lighting fires only, helping wet turf or giving light;
and in many parts of Ireland the ,mall farmers wad poorer
class depend altogether on bogwood for giving light to the
household during the long winter evenings, and the price it '
brings in towns for lighting fires is far above that of coals
imported into Dublin. The wood which the correspondent
of the Morning Post saw at Kilkee was, in all probability,
found on the bog after the peat had been stripped off it, by
the cutting out of the turf, and nothing more was necessary
than to chip it up and dry it. I have been told that, many
years ago, in the north of Ireland, the chipping of fir blocks
in the bogs was quite a profession, requiring much skill
and dexterity; so much so that some individuals could earn
2s. and 2s. 6d. per day at this work, whilst others as strong
but not so skilful could not earn 6d. a day. I question
whether, when the writer of this letter was in Kilkee, if he
wanted to buy the bogwood he saw about the streets and
houses, he would have found it so che4 as he appears to
suppose. The people had it exposed to dry to be treasured
up for the winter evenings' light, or to dispose of it for
lighting fires in the neighbouring towns. Just at this mo-
ment
it is very precious in the West of Ireland, and there
are many people living in the immediate vicinity of the,
bogs who are making a livelihood by raising. and selling it
throughout the country.

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