haps much greater, the materials of stone and gravel as easy to be
found, and the workmanship, at least, twice as cheap. Besides, the work
may be done gradually, with allowances for the poverty of the nation, by
so many perch a year; but with a special care to encourage skill and
diligence, and to prevent fraud in the undertakers, to which we are too
liable, and which are not always confined to those of the meaner sort:
but against these, no doubt, the wisdom of the nation may and will
provide.

Another evil, which, in my opinion, deserves the public care, is the ill
management of the bogs; the neglect whereof is a much greater mischief
to this kingdom than most people seem to be aware of.

It is allowed, indeed, by those who are esteemed most skilful in such
matters, that the red, swelling mossy bog, whereof we have so many large
tracts in this island, is not by any means to be fully reduced; but the
skirts, which are covered with a green coat, easily may, being not an
accretion, or annual growth of moss, like the other.

Now, the landlords are generally too careless that they suffer their
tenants to cut their turf in these skirts, as well as the bog adjoined;
whereby there is yearly lost a considerable quantity of land throughout
the kingdom, never to be recovered.

But this is not the greatest part of the mischief: for the main bog,
although, perhaps, not reducible to natural soil, yet, by continuing
large, deep, straight canals through the middle, cleaned at proper times
as low as the channel or gravel, would become a secure summer-pasture;
the margins might, with great profit and ornament, be filled with
quickens, birch, and other trees proper for such a soil, and the canals
be convenient for water-carriage of the turf, which is now drawn upon
sled-cars, with great expense, difficulty, and loss of time, by reason
of the many turf-pits scattered irregularly through the bog, wherein
great numbers of cattle are yearly drowned. And it hath been, I confess,
to me a matter of the greatest vexation, as well as wonder, to think how
any landlord could be so absurd as to suffer such havoc to be made.

All the acts for encouraging plantations of forest-trees are, I am told,
extremely defective;[98] which, with great submission, must have been
owing to a defect of skill in the contrivers of them. In this climate,
by the continual blowing of the west-south-west wind, hardly any tree of
value will come to perfection that is