some notes on the diet of this people which may be instructive.

At the beginning of the present century the small farmers were
generally weavers. There was an obvious incompatibility in the two
occupations, and the farms were neglected. Gradually this evil has
been corrected, especially since the famine. The weavers have
become cottiers, and the farmers have devoted themselves to their
agricultural operations exclusively with the more energy since
railroads have so facilitated the quick sale of produce, particularly
that sort of produce which enables the occupiers to supply the markets
with the smaller necessaries of life, and with which large farmers
would not trouble themselves. Daily labourers working from 6 A.M., to
6 P.M. in large fields with machinery cannot do the hundreds of little
matters which the family of the small holder attends to every hour of
the day, often in the night--and which give work to women and children
as well as the men--work of the most healthful character and most free
from demoralizing influences.

On a farm of fifteen to thirty acres there is constant employment of
a profitable kind for the members of a household, including women and
children. The effect of good drainage is that farming operations can
be carried on through winter, in preparing the ground and putting in
wheat and other crops early to supply the markets, when prices are
high. Oats, barley, potatoes, flax, turnips claim attention in
turn, and then come the weeding and thinning, the turf-making, the
hay-making, and all the harvest operations. It is by the ceaseless
activity of small farmers in watching over their pigs, poultry, lambs,
&c., that the markets are kept so regularly supplied, and that towns
grow up and prosper. If Down and Antrim had been divided into farms
of thousands of acres each, like Lincolnshire, what would Belfast