In consequence of many published statements by public speakers, newspaper writers, essayists, and writers in reviews, with reference to the relative amount of Irish land which is out of use, I have thought it advisable to make this matter the subject of a communication to this Society. The tenor of the statements just referred to is that the land utilised in Ireland for agricultural purposes is gradually decreasing, and that waste lands are as steadily increasing; in fact that the land of Ireland is steadily going back to bog and waste, and that Irish agriculture is steadily decaying, as compared with agriculture elsewhere.

Read before the Society, 29 April 1884