strawberries of excellent size, colour, and flavour, though grown in cold frames, or sheltered borders in the open air. These, if packed tastefully, in flat one pound flimsy punnets, would make from 6s. to 15s. a dozen pounds, wholesale, in the London markets. Bramley's Seedling, a magnificent and profitable late culinary apple, grows to perfection even in the north of Ireland, and under good culture, fruit of this variety, kept in cold storage until February, March, and April, would command high prices in any English market. This variety is large and handsome, and when matured, the skin is yellow and marked with stripes of red, which make it very attractive. The tree is a tremendous cropper, and no fruit dealer would buy the American apple if well grown samples of this one were marketed by Irish growers in 500 and 1,000 bushel parcels. I have been consulted by growers in foreign centres. I have had samples of their apples and pears sent me for inspection, in quantity, and I have no hesitation in saying that the quality of the Irish apples and pears is superior to that of any sent from foreign countries. There are many other fine money-making varieties which would flourish to perfection on the Irish soil, and command as ready and as profitable a sale as Bramley's Seedling. Among them are Lane's Prince Albert, Lord Grosvenor, Lord Derby, Ecklinville Seedling, Worcester Pearmain, Bismarck, and Newtown Wonder, all of which are the kind sought after by market buyers and retail distributors. I have seen dwarf pear trees in Ireland bearing from five to ten dozen fruits of saleable size, which were worth from 6d. to 1s. per dozen wholesale. With 302 dwarf trees to the acre, yielding an average of 5s. per tree, the return would be £75 per acre. As varieties can be grown that will command from 1s. to 1s. 6d. a dozen, and the crops can be increased as the trees mature, the income from the fruit is capable of being much augmented, perhaps even doubled. Williams, Bon Chretien, and Pitmaston Duchess, two fine saleable pears, succeed well in Irish soil. As to the Beurre Capiaumont, it grows here in great profusion, on the bush form of tree. I mention these facts to show that in advocating a revolution in the present Irish systems of culture, the new industry is one which blossoms with promise, and can be established on the Irish soil with the certainty of success. Here the testimony of Arthur Young, in his Tour in Ireland, is effective. He said: "As far as I can form a general idea of the soil of the two kingdoms, Ireland has the advantage," and that "natural fertility, acre for acre, over the two kingdoms, is certainly in favour of Ireland." The River Suir flows 95 miles to Waterford Harbour, through Munster. Along this river is to be found some of the finest apple-growing land in Ireland.

There is no reason why the Suir valley should not in time equal the Annapolis valley of Nova Scotia, in the production of huge quantities of grand apples, for sending to London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Berlin, and Paris. By the aid of the new system of raising fruit on dwarf trees, market growers in Ireland can ensure supplies of larger and choicer fruits than can possibly be obtained from tall or standard trees. As the dwarf trees come quickly into bearing, and on account of their habit of growth can be kept entirely under control, for pruning and spraying, they enable any planter to gather a fair crop the second year from planting. Now, there is ample scope for setting millions of these dwarf forms of fruit trees, of the best market varieties, on the lands adjacent to the Suir, and if this were done, an end would soon be put, in that locality, to the discontent among the peasantry, which will never be really cured, so long as the present agricultural systems remain. Start them planting fruit trees, encourage them to make their land a profitable fruit garden, give them details of the new husbandry, with every facility to foster and develop it, and you will do more in one year to raise and help the Irish peasantry than is possible by any other means in fifty years with the perpetuation of the old method of cultivation. So long as the tenant has security of tenure, it is enough. Irish rural industries can be revived and Ireland's market gardens and fruit farms be made to become as productive as any in the world. As to the objection that there may be over-production, it was raised when I first inaugurated the fruit-growing movement in England, and there is no need for me to deal with it again. Best varieties of apples and pears, such as I advise should be grown, are worth more money to-day than ever. While increasing imports reach our shores, season after season, fruit-growing may be extended with the utmost confidence. The future is bright enough, and I am speaking with the experience of a quarter of a century of the business.

DECAY OF IRISH AGRICULTURE.

Fifteen years ago the Champion potato, a low grade, valueless variety, was cultivated on the most extensive scale, for the reason chiefly that it was productive and needed little care in culture. This potato was superseded by others, after I had frequently denounced it, as "the curse of Irish agriculture." Now, although I advocate the production of good varieties of the tuber for early work, especially, yet I have no hesitation in condemning potato culture, as carried out by Irish growers generally, and I say that the potato in Ireland must be relegated to its proper position. We want less potato growing, and more fruit and

flower raising; less permanent pasture, and more market gardening. At one time Ireland was largely occupied by orchards, which proves that fruit will grow well on its soil. To-day the industry is represented by something like 5,000 acres, according to official statistics. So fruit growing and market gardening combined are carried out on a very limited area. Against this condition of things, there is the fact that potatoes occupy 629,481 acres, and that permanent pastures are increasing, and are now represented by 11,575,515 acres. If the Irish cultivators wish to alter their system and do what many alert fruit growers in England have been doing for the last fifteen years, with such pronounced success, they have plenty of derelict and profitless land to utilise for the new movement. In taking a statistical survey of Irish agriculture in connection with the division of Irish land, we find that the curtain of green, which has done more to drive Irish labour from the soil than anything else, has almost entirely covered the face of the country. The increase in grass land has been regular ever since 1850, every decade showing matters getting worse. From the same period, concurrently with the increase in grass, there has been a decrease in the areas devoted to oats, which, up to 1860, formed the chief crop grown. Since 1860 the areas devoted to potatoes have declined, so that we may take it for granted that the oat and potato land which has passed out of cultivation, has been occupied by the curtain of green. So long as the increase in permanent pastures continues, so long will the agricultural population diminish, and thus the complete depletion of the Irish agricultural districts is, if the process be not stayed, merely a question of time. Writing from personal experience, I can confidently say that potato culture in Ireland, has, during the last quarter of a century, been carried out on the most haphazard lines, and if I place the average annual output during that period at four lons per acre, I shall be above, rather than under, the actual average obtained. That fact alone is an unanswerable indictment of the system of culture practised by Irish potato growers. Compared with the average potato output per acre of England, Scotland and Wales, Ireland stands last of all. It is thus clear that even as regards the culture of the once most favourite agricultural crop, the Irish system is proved to be faulty, to say the least.

SMALL HOLDINGS, WAGES, AND LABOURERS.

Ireland is also well suited for the introduction of the new culture, on account of the large number of small holdings which exist there. It is, in fact, a country of small homesteads. According to the latest returns, there are 76,403 holdings with

five and not exceeding ten acres; 62,792 with ten and not exceeding fifteen; 55,538 with fifteen and not exceeding twenty, and 64,934 with twenty and not exceeding thirty acres. These, as far as areas are concerned, are well suited for development under intensive culture. Holdings of ten acres or less occupy one-third of the whole, and of twenty acres or less more than one-half of the total number. Now in Guernsey the holdings are considerably smaller than they are in Ireland, and it is on the smallest holdings that choice fruit, flower, and vegetable culture has been most successful. There are men in Guernsey getting good livings from one acre holdings, and though the system cannot be applied to every holding in Ireland, still the locations, which are perfectly adapted for the business, are of a most extensive nature, and would, if developed, need a huge and increasing army of well paid labourers to carry out the work. In Guernsey, out of the 11,780 acres under cultivation, 5,112 acres are worked by tenants, and 6,668 by the actual owners, and the proportion of tenant growers is considerably larger than is generally supposed by those interested in the prosperity of the rural industries of the United Kingdom. The great success which has attended the Guernsey growers is therefore due more to their methods of culture than to proprietorship, and had they enjoyed the privileges of a system of tenure, such as was conferred upon the Irish peasantry by the Act of 1881, they would, without any form of cultivating ownership, have done equally well, for the utilisation of the new culture was, and is, the basis of their prosperity. The statistics of wages paid to the labouring population of Ireland, are of value, tending as they do to support the argument against the present systems which prevail. Wages are a good index of the condition of any industry, and when we look at the rates of wages paid to Irish labourers, and compare them with those of other parts of the United Kingdom, we find that when the average weekly wage in England was 17s. a week, in Ireland it was only 10s. There are many counties where the weekly wage of the agricultural workers is less than 10s., while in others, according to Government reports, "as a class they scarcely exist." If any other evidence of the serious decline in the Irish agricultural industry was needed, we have it in the fact, also furnished by official publications, that not only are the holdings in some districts "worked by the farmers and their families," but even then "large numbers of these small farmers and their sons. go to work as labourers on other farms, in certain counties, in England and Scotland, during the spring, summer, and autumn." Under the improved system proposed in this article, there is no reason whatever why, within a few years, the wages of the Irish

labourer could not be doubled. For the ten years preceding 1900, the weekly wages paid to the ordinary labourer in Westmeath in December and June, ranged from 8s. to 10s. If we turn our attention to the environs of Paris, we find the intensive cultivators there paying as much as £50 a year, per acre, for labour alone, and they save money at their business, and many become rich men. Cheap culture is one of the greatest evils which exist in Irish agricultural circles, and yet, with the wage of the unfortunate worker down as low as Ss. a week, the Irish farmer finds it difficult to make both ends meet. In Munster there are 4,445,583 acres under crops and pasture, and they only call for the services of 17 men to each thousand acres. On a small fruit farm of only four and a half acres, on the estate of Lord Leconfield, in Sussex, four labourers find employment all the year round. This is nothing out of the way, but if we say that 2,000,000 acres, in the province of Munster, were cultivated under the new system, and had only one labourer allotted to every five acres, 400,000 workers would be needed instead of the 76,112 at present. While under the Paris system, of a man to the acre, at a wage of 20s. a week, 2,000,000 workers would find profitable occupation on the land. When the experts went to France to report on commercial horticulture, they were astonished at many things which they saw in the market gardens of Paris, but nothing surprised them more than the "smallness of the holdings," and "the close and methodical system of cropping adopted." Of course ample labour was needed to effect this, and however much the Paris gardener seeks to reduce the cost of production, he never attempts to economise in labour. Judging from the state of the gardens, and the excellence of the crops, there are few private gardens in England so well manned." These words are instructive, proving, as they do, from actual observation, that the success of the Paris market grower is chiefly due to modern cropping, high culture, and ample labour. Neither in England, Scotland, or Wales, do the cultivators employ as much labour on the land as they should. In a report on French agriculture, it is stated that, "on the large farm system six to eight men are employed for every one hundred acres," but that "under the small farm system of France, thirty-two, and more, are needed on the same extent of land," and that of the peasant proprietors, "3,000,000 possess holdings on an average of two and a half acres each." If the French grower economised in labour, as the Irish farmers do, he would starve. Intensive systems of culture enable him to make his two and a half acre holding pay.

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