Extracts from much good has been done; the farmers find great benefit from it by Evidence. having additional crops. 107, Q. 41. Armagh, 69, Q. 53. Q. 107. Armagh. 220, Q. 8. 41. Can you give us an account of the cost of any improvement, and the return or profit ?-It depends a great deal upon the description of ground. A drain in medium ground costs about sixpence the Irish perch. 42. What is the gain from that?—The following year I find that it is able to remunerate the tenant for his expenditure, in the additional crop. 43. On medium kind of ground, what is the cost of draining per acre?It would come to about £8 an acre, as near as I can tell at the present moment. 44. Might those permanent improvements be carried on to a much greater extent?—I think it likely, and it is permanently improving. The tenantry are getting into the habit of improving. Mr. Alexander Kinmouth, farmer. 53. Is the same rule followed with regard to drains?—No. 54. What is the rule, then?—The tenant generally makes them at his own expense. 55. Do you know what the general custom is, in reference to other properties, surrounding Colonel Close's estate-Taking the anion in general, I do not think there is a great deal of money advanced for permanent improvements in any other part of the union that I know of. 56. What do you consider is about the average expense of thoroughdraining, by the acre; and what return or profit do you think there would be from such an expenditure?—I should think about £3 to £3 10s. the English acre, according to the subsoil. 57. What is the distance of the drains -Thirty feet asunder. 58. What increase of produce would you expect?—I should think it would give from 15s. to £1 an acre. 107. Suppose a person held at will, what arrangement would you then propose, in reference to the thorough-draining, between the landlord and tenant ?-Five shillings an acre additional rent upon the tenant would repay the landlord; and it would be £1 an acre advantage to the tenant in the crop. Henry Leslie Prentice, esq., agent. 8. Is the state of agriculture improving or otherwise, and in what particulars? It is improving in every respect, and very much so within the last sixteen years; it has latterly made rapid progress as to draining. The encouragement given by landlords has induced many to commence the thorough-draining system. 9. What is the arrangement entered into upon that subject?— The arrangement made by Lord Caledon is an allowance of £2 per Irish acre for all lands drained on his estate, according to the directions of the person appointed for that purpose. 10. Does he charge any interest or per centage upon the sums so paid?—No, nothing whatever; he gives it as his own contribution towards a permanent improvement on his property, to all tenants holding determinable leases or at will, RULES and REGULATIONS to be observed in Thorough-Draining, to Extracts from enable the Tenantry to obtain the Premium offered by Lord Evidence. Caledon, viz., £2 per acre, the distance from drain to drain being Armagh. 18 feet. 1st. The upright drains must be perfectly straight, and at an equal distance throughout the field (except where a gusset shore is necessary). 2nd. They are to be sunk 2 feet 6 inches in depth, neatly cut in the sides, and only from 3 to 4 inches broad in the bottom. 3rd. They must be filled 12 inches deep with small stones, the largest of which will not exceed 2 inches in any direction they can be measured. 4th. The putting in of the stones must always commence at the top, and proceed in the direction of the fall; but care must be taken that the drains be first perfectly clean. 5th. The stones being in, must immediately be covered with tough thin scraws, so closely and neatly arranged that water cannot RUN through them, but must FILTER in through the sides of the drain; the distance from the scraw to the surface of the land must be 16 inches (which should be all loosened the following season with either a subsoil spade or plough). 6th. The upright drains must empty themselves into a main drain, which should be opened about 9 feet from the gripe, 2 feet 9 inches in depth, and filled 15 inches with the same description of stones as the upright ones were filled with. 7th. The drains when finished must be entirely free from clay, sand, or any other material which would form an obstruction to the run of the water. 8th. The drains to be laid of, and afterwards inspected by the person appointed for that purpose, on whose certificate alone the money can be paid in the office. Mr. Michael Kenny, farmer and under agent. Appendix 55, note. Cavan. 59. Does the landlord pay any portion of it?—Yes. Lord Farn- 321, Q. 59. ham is paying a proportion of the draining; he is paying 4d. a perch and so do many other landlords. 60. Is that allowance made to any of the tenants disposed to drain-Yes, any tenant. Lord Farnham is paying 28. an acre for each half-year. If a man had forty acres, he would go to an expense of £4, at 4d. a perch; and he is paying a proportion of the expense of the lime. 61. What is the proportion?—He has not paid much; he has paid some 6d. It will be about 6d. a barrel; that will be half the amount of the price of the lime. 62. To what extent does he allow that?-He will not go further than 28. an acre for draining and liming. He would rather it was on the draining. 63. Has this draining had any effect in increasing the demand for labour-Yes, it has. James Johnston, esq., land proprietor. Donegal. 40. Have you a description of the cost of any improvements, and 203, Q. 40. the return or profit therefrom?—I will suppose the land to be five acres, upon which the improvement is to be made, of the value of 28. 6d. an acre in its state of nature; the cost of trenching and thorough-draining to be £7 an acre, the interest of which at five per cent. is 7s. per annum; the land thus drained stands the proprietor in 9s. 6d. an acre; that land will with moderate treatment produce two good crops, potatoes and oats, which will pay the cultivator largely; and at the end of that time no difficulty would be found in getting 15s. per acre for the land so treated, thus eaving a clear Evidence. Extracts from annual profit of 5s. 6d. per acre for the outlay of £7 per acre, besides five per cent. In a case of this kind last year on my own property, land worth 28. per acre so treated, gave me the crops which I considered well worth £5 per acre, of oats, and left me the land in an improved state. It is now producing very good grass, and I can get 15s. per acre for the land from a solvent tenant. Donegal. 278, Q. 27. 41. Without professing to be very accurate as to the amount of the produce of the crop, do you consider that seven years will repay a man for such an agricultural improvement ?—I am perfectly certain of it. I have had repeated experiments made, and they have never yet failed; this is merely an experiment in the course of last year, made upon ten acres of land, which were valued at 2s. 6d. an acre. 42. Did you subsoil?--I trench it with the spade. Charles Horatio Kennedy, esq., agent. 27. State the details as regards feucing, thorough-draining, and subsoiling the tenants' farms?—The fences are made by the tenants themselves. The first essential in the cultivation of land is, to relieve it from the superabundant moisture. When the subsoil is of a stiff quality, and impervious to water, there appears but one course to pursue, that of making thorough-drains, in the direction of the slope, at distances not exceeding twenty-one feet apart, and to loosen the ground between the drains to a convenient depth, not less than sixteen inches, so that the water may percolate to the drains. The ordinary way of performing this work requires considerable outlay, averaging from £5 to £10 or £12 an acre, according to the circumstances of the land; and, therefore, it is unfitted for a poor man. The following system for arriving at the same object, in a manner adapted to the only means which the poor tenantry of this country have at their disposal-their labour,-was established on the Glenfin estate, by which considerable results have been produced for the time, aided by the encouragement of the agricultural fund, from which loans were made to tenants who had thorough-drained under the system, which was as follows, viz. :-Au applicant for a loan must open the necessary thorough-drains for an acre, which, at an average, would cost (in labour) about £1. This done, he goes about the usual operation of tilling the land, upon a principle that leads gradually to a perfect system of draining-deepening and loosening the soil,-indispensable to the production of copious crops. If the ground be level, he plants his potatoes in lazy beds, straight across from drain to drain, as shown at A, B, C, D, in the accompanying diagram, making the ridges four feet, and the trenches two feet wide. If the ground be sloping, the potato ridges should run obliquely from the thorough-drains to the centre of the space between them, as shown at B, D, E, F, so that the water may have a slight fall along the potato trenches, and that the shortest possible course may be secured to it to reach the thorough-drains from every part of the ground. 1. 1st year's trenches, two feet wide. The bottom of these is dug or moved with a crowbar, after shovelling the potatoes. 2. 1st year's potato ridges, 5 feet wide. 3. 2nd year's potato trenches. ILLUSTRATION ON THOROUGH-DRAINING AND SUBSOILING, Being a method applicable to reclaiming waste lands, and the improvement of wet retentive soils, within the means of small farmers whose only capital is their labour. Extracts from Extracts from After the potatoes have been shovelled, the bottom of the trenches is Evidence. dug with a spade, or moved with crowbars in the manner so efficiently brought before the public by Mr. Wilson of Belvoir. The land becomes well deepened by this method in those portions occupied by the trenches the first year. When next potatoes are planted in the same ground, care must be taken to make the trenches occupy the centre of the previous ridges, as shown in E, F, G, H, in the diagram, and the subsoil being similarly turned or moved in these trenches, the two potato crops have the effect of loosening, to a sufficient depth, two-thirds of the land thus treated; and all the superabundant moisture, whether from spring or surface water, will percolate freely through the lowest part of the loose soil, by the shortest possible course, to the drains. The thorough-drains may be gradually covered in, as the farmer's circumstances permit. The third crop of potatoes, when planted, deepens the small portions of the land which escaped the first and second crop; but the land becomes perfectly dry without this. The thorough-drains are required to be made two feet six inches deep; their width depends on whether they are to be constructed afterwards with gullets, or with small broken stones: four inches at bottom is sufficient for broken stones; the gullet requires This method is well suited to the reclaiming of waste lands. Andrew Durham, esq., land proprietor. Down. 95, Q. 16. Fermanagh. 330, Q. 87. Londonderry. 3. Q. 46. more. 16. With respect to permanent improvements, are there facilities for them, or impediments to them, arising out of the nature of the interest of the proprietors, and by whom are they generally effected?-A tenant is more encouraged to improve, having for his landlord a proprietor with a perpetuity; improvements by tenants exclusively are most common; latterly, landlords have contributed, especially for draining, the cost of which varies from 1d. to 4d. an Irish perch, of seven yards, for opening; I have been paid by two erops, though, in general, three crops might be required. 17. Do you consider yourself paid for the whole expense of draining by those two crops?-I consider I have; draining is still much required, and could be extended with benefit. Mr. William Milne, agriculturist to the Earl of Erne. 87. Have you made any calculations of the expense of improving land by subsoiling and draining with tiles?-Yes: the expense of tiles per acre, £3; delivering at a reasonable distance, say two miles, 14s.; putting in the tiles, £1 14s.; subsoiling with horses, the spade labour being 10d. a day, £1 58.; being, upon the whole, £6 13s. 88. You think land might be thoroughly drained and subsoiled at that expense ?-Yes, not more than £6 13s. 89. How deep do you propose to subsoil?-Fourteen inches. 90. What do you calculate the increased produce after improvement in this way-I think it would produce two quarters of oats more than if in its natural state. We estimate that at £2. 91. You calculate, by an expenditure of £6 13s. an acre, an increased produce of £2 would be obtamed?—Yes. Major Thomas Scott, land proprietor. 46. What is your arrangement in reference to the improvements |