edition of 1755:--"The want of trade
and industry causes such inequality in the distribution of their (the
people's) property, that while a few of the richer sort can wantonly
pamper appetites of every kind, and indulge with the affluence of so
many monarchs, the poor, alas! who make at least ninety-nine of every
hundred among them, are under the necessity of going clad after the
fashion of the old Irish, whose manners and customs they retain to this
day, and of feeding on potatoes, the most generally embraced advantage
of the inhabitants, which the great Sir Walter Raleigh left behind
him."[30] This writer's remarks apply chiefly to Cork, Waterford, Kerry,
and Limerick. He proceeds: "The feeding of cattle on large dairies of
several hundred acres together, may be managed by the inhabitants of one
or two cabins, whose wretched subsistence, for the most part, depends
upon an acre or two of potatoes and a little skimmed milk."[31]

Many think that the yield per acre of potatoes has greatly increased
with time in Ireland. This opinion, although true, is not true to the
extent generally supposed; for, when Arthur Young travelled in this
country, and even before it, the yield, as far as recorded, seems nearly
equal to the quantity produced at present, except in some peculiar
cases. A well-known agriculturist, John Wynne Baker, writing in 1765,
says, in a note to his "Agriculture Epitomized," that he had in the past
year (1764) of apple potatoes (not a prolific kind) in the proportion of
more than one hundred and nine barrels an acre.

Arthur Young came to Ireland in 1776, and he brings his account of the
country down to 1779. Thirty-six years had elapsed since the great
Famine, only one generation, and he found the famous root of Virginia a
greater favourite than ever. From Slane, in Meath, he writes that
potatoes are a great article of culture at Kilcock, where he found them
grown for cattle; store bullocks were fed upon them, and they were even
deemed good food for horses when mixed with bran. In Slane itself, the
old custom, which was the chief cause of the famine of 1740, still
prevailed; for he says, the people there were not done taking up their
potatoes till Christmas. The potato culture, he elsewhere remarks, has
increased twenty-fold within the last twenty years, all the hogs in the
country being fattened on them. They were usually given to them
half-boiled. Wherever he went he almost invariably found the food of t