I have already had one long discussion with the Colonel. He says that the land is good. I persist in considering it very indifferent as a rule; moreover, the climate is very bad. Vegetation is so backward that haymaking has scarcely commenced. They never secure more than one crop. The bad weather comes too soon for it to be possible to get any aftermath. I have not yet seen a field of wheat. When it was grown, the harvest was rarely successful. I had the curiosity to visit a large garden which has some reputation in the county, for the owner sells the produce of it. I am certain that it is fully three weeks behind Normandy, and even more behind the suburbs of Paris. In my garden in the Avenue Friedland, the rhododendrons have flowered a month ago. Here they are just opening. It is the 6th of July, yet there are scarcely any strawberries. The gardener proudly showed me a cherry-tree, which, thanks to an excellent situation, has already some ripe fruit! They are being sold at 1_s._ 6_d._ per pound to a dealer, who retails them at 2_s._ 1_d._! How can agriculture prosper under such circumstances? Owing to the Gulf Stream, the winter is not severe; but how can the poor work in January and February? Yesterday we sat down to dinner at eight o’clock. We left it soon after nine, and it was broad daylight. The lamps were still unlighted. I therefore conclude that in six months it will be dark until nine o’clock in the morning, and we are in the South of Ireland. What must it be in the North? And what is a day’s labour worth if it only contains five or six working hours? After lunch, the Colonel took me for a drive. We first went ten or twelve miles to visit Sir Croker Barrington’s beautiful seat. The Castle is placed in the midst of a lovely park; it is modern, but it has several towers, machicolations, and battlements, which give it a look of feudal ferocity, completed by four or five old cannon, placed like a battery on the terrace which overlooks the road we drove up by. Alas! they did not suffice to intimidate the Land Leaguers of the neighbourhood; for one morning, three or four years ago, they came in broad daylight and organised a battue in the park. They killed all the deer without any one daring to oppose them. The deer have since been replaced, and we have even seen some of them. But what was done at Sir Croker Barrington’s is repeated, more or less, in all directions, on a smaller scale. In many counties it is now impossible to preserve at all. Poaching is openly carried on. “We ourselves, the landlords, are now the game,” said the Colonel in a melancholy tone, “and for us there is no close season.” However, sometimes the game resists. The instance of a Mr. Carden was quoted to me, who at last succeeded in getting the best of the whole population.