ess waste land of all sorts. Of uncultivated
mountains there are no such tracts as are found in our four northern
counties, and the North Riding of Yorkshire, with the eastern line of
Lancaster, nearly down to the Peak of Derby, which form an extent of
above a hundred miles of waste. The most considerable of this sort in
Ireland are in Kerry, Galway, and Mayo, and some in Sligo and Donegal.
But all these together will not make the quantity we have in the four
northern counties; the valleys in the Irish mountains are also more
inhabited, I think, than those of England, except where there are mines,
and consequently some sort of cultivation creeping up the sides. Natural
fertility, acre for acre over the two kingdoms, is certainly in favour of
Ireland; of this I believe there can scarcely be a doubt entertained,
when it is considered that some of the more beautiful, and even best
cultivated counties in England, owe almost everything to the capital,
art, and industry of the inhabitants.

The circumstance which strikes me as the greatest singularity of Ireland
is the rockiness of the soil, which should seem at first sight against
that degree of fertility; but the contrary is the fact. Stone is so
general, that I have great reason to believe the whole island is one vast
rock of different strata and kinds rising out of the sea. I have rarely
heard of any great depths being sunk without meeting with it. In general
it appears on the surface in every part of the kingdom; the flattest and
most fertile parts, as Limerick, Tipperary, and Meath, have it at no
great depth, almost as much as the more barren ones. May we not
recognise in this the hand of bounteous Providence, which has given
perhaps the most stony soil in Europe to the moistest climate in it? If
as much rain fell upon the clays of England (a soil very rarely met with
in Ireland, and never without much stone) as falls upon the rocks of her
sister island, those lands could not be cultivated. But the rocks are
here clothed with verdure; those of limestone, with only a thin covering
of mould, have the softest and most beautiful turf imaginable.

Of the great advantages resulting from the general plenty of limestone
and limestone gravel, and the nature of the bogs, I shall have occasion
to speak more particularly hereafter.

The rockiness of the soil in Ireland is so universal that it predominates
in every sort. One cannot use with propriety the terms clay, loam,