Some writers undertook to show that agriculture was more
profitable than grazing; others turned their attention to improve the
implements of husbandry, and to lay down better rules for the rotation
of crops. Potatoes must have been pretty extensively grown at this time,
and yet they do not get a place in any of the rotations given. We have
fallow, wheat, oats, rye, turnips, saintfoin, lucerne, barley, peas,
beans, clover, rye-grass, and even buck-wheat, tares and lentils rotated
in various ways, but the potato is never mentioned. The growth of
turnips is treated with special importance. Hops, too, receive much
consideration, and the Royal Dublin Society published in 1733 careful
and elaborate instructions for their growth and management. The reason
the growing of potatoes gets no place in any of the rotations of this
period seems to be, that their culture was chiefly confined to the poor
Celtic population in the mountainous and neglected districts; or, as the
author whose pamphlet has a short introduction from Swift[12] says, "to
the Popish parts of the kingdom." Those who wrote in favour of tillage
instead of grazing, set great importance on the increase of population,
and bewailed emigration as the effect of bad harvests and want of
tillage.
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