Potatoes and turnips may now be set in “lazy bed” ridges. Mr. Mitchell Henry says, “Good herbage will grow on the bog thus treated; but as much as possible should at once be put into root-crops, with farm-yard manure for potatoes and turnips. The more lime you give the better will be your crop; and treated thus there is no doubt that even during the first year land so reclaimed will yield remunerative crops.” And further, that “after being broken up a second time the land materially improves, and becomes doubly valuable.” Also that he has no doubt that “all bog-lands may be thus reclaimed, but it is uphill work, and not remunerative to attempt the reclamation of bogs that are more than four feet in depth.” There is another and a simpler method of dealing with bogs—viz., setting them into narrow ridges; cutting broad trenches between the ridges; piling the turf cut out from these trenches into little heaps a few feet apart, burning them, and spreading the ashes over the ridges. This is rather largely practiced on the coast of Donegal, in conjunction with sea-weed manuring, and is prohibited in other parts of Ireland as prejudicial to the interests of the landlord. We shall now proceed to the philosophy of these processes. First, the drainage. Everybody in Ireland knows that the bog holds water like a sponge, and in such quantities that ordinary vegetation is rotted by the excess of moisture. There is good reason to believe that the ancient forests, which once occupied the sites of most of the Irish bogs, were in some cases destroyed by the rotting of their stems and roots in the excess of vegetable soil formed by generations upon generations of fallen leaves, which, in a humid climate like that of Ireland, could never become drained or air-dried. But this is not all. There is rotting and rotting. When the rotting of vegetable matter goes on under certain conditions it is highly favorable to the growth of other vegetation, even of the vegetation of the same kind of plants as those supplying the rotting material. Thus, rotten and rotting straw is a good manure for wheat; and the modern scientific vine-grower carefully places the dressing of his vines about their roots, in order that they may rot, and supply the necessary salts for future growth. The same applies generally; rotting cabbage-leaves supply the best of manure for cabbages; rotting rhubarb-leaves for rhubarb; rose-leaves for rose-trees; and so on throughout the vegetable kingdom.