In 1825 the commercial intercourse between Great Britain and Ireland was put upon the same footing as the coasting trade of the ports of England. Steam navigation between the two islands also had received an enormous impulse. The small farmers and cottiers of Ireland were poultry-keepers. Too often the poor oppressed tenants were wont to think—‘The hen lays eggs, they go into the lord’s frying-pan.’ Steam navigation gave a new impulse to Irish industry. Before steam-vessels entered the Cove of Cork, an egg, at certain seasons, could scarcely be found in the market of that city. England wanted eggs; steam-boats would convey them rapidly to Bristol; the small farmers applied themselves to the production of eggs; Cork itself then obtained a constant and cheap supply. In 1835 Ireland exported as many eggs to England as were valued at 156,000_l._, being in number nearly a hundred millions. In 1847 it was stated by Mr. Richardson, in a work on Domestic Fowls, published in Dublin, that the export of eggs from Ireland to England was ‘bordering on a million sterling.’ The eggs are valued at 5_s._ 6_d._ for 124, which would indicate an export of about four hundred and fifty millions of eggs. We come to more precise results when we learn, on the authority of the secretary of the Dublin Steam-Packet Company, that in the year 1844–5 there were shipped from Dublin alone, to London and Liverpool, forty-eight millions of eggs, valued at 122,500_l._ In the census of 1841, the poultry of Ireland was valued at 202,000_l._, taking each fowl at 6_d._ per head. The return was below the reality; for the peasantry were naturally afraid of some fiscal imposition, worse even than the old tax of ‘duty fowls,’ when they had to account for their Dame Partletts. Eight millions of poultry, which this return indicates, is, however, a large number. The gross number of holdings in Ireland, as shown by the agricultural returns of 1847, was 935,000; and this would give above eight fowls to every cottage and farm,—a number sufficient to produce four hundred and fifty millions of eggs for exportation, if all could be collected and all carried to a port. One hundred and twenty eggs yearly is the produce of a good hen. It would be safe to take the Irish export of eggs at half the number,—an enormous quantity, when we consider what a trifling matter an egg appears when we talk of large culture and extensive commerce. Out of such trifles communities have grown into industrious and frugal habits and consequent prosperity. There was a time when the English farmer’s wife would keep her household out of the profits of her butter, her poultry, and her eggs; when she duly rose at five o’clock on the market-day morning, rode with her wares some seven miles in a jolting cart, and stood for six hours at a stall till she had turned all her commodity into the ready penny. The old thrift and the old simplicity may return, when English farmers learn not to despise