Page:Irish Emigration and The Tenure of Land in Ireland.djvu/181

Rh "The Pastures of Ireland." (pp. 94 and 130.)

"From the earliest times then, until late in the last century, Ireland was almost entirely a grazing country." p. 193.

"Its level surface, overspread with the most luxuriant herbage, presented a wide field over which the cattle of the first settlers might freely range and multiply at an exceedingly rapid rate. Their owners became proportionally wealthy."—pp. 196 and 197.

"The pastoral occupation of the primitive Irish was not laid aside as soon as they had divided their new country amongst them, and had stationed themselves on particular spots; but continued to be practised by their descendants for many generations. The principal obstacle to change was probably at first the nature of the climate which, Mela says, was as unsuitable for grain as it was favourable to the growth of grass (Pomp. Mela, de Situ Orbis, lib. iii. cap. 6); and this was, perhaps, the sole reason why, as late as the twelfth century, the people could still be represented as despising husbandry, and as not having laid aside their ancient pastoral mode of life. Even in the beginning of the l6th century the Book of Ballymote is said to have been purchased for 140 milch cows. More than a hundred years later, we find the poet Spenser lamenting that "all men fell to pasturage, and none to husbandry and recommending that an ordinance should be made to compel every one who kept 20 kine, to keep one plough going likewise." pp. 180 and 190.