Many think that the yield per acre of potatoes has greatly increased with time in Ireland.  This opinion, although true, is not true to the extent generally supposed; for, when Arthur Young travelled in this country, and even before it, the yield, as far as recorded, seems nearly equal to the quantity produced at present, except in some peculiar cases.  A well-known agriculturist, John Wynne Baker, writing in 1765, says, in a note to his “Agriculture Epitomized,” that he had in the past year (1764) of apple potatoes (not a prolific kind) in the proportion of more than one hundred and nine barrels an acre.

Arthur Young came to Ireland in 1776, and he brings his account of the country down to 1779.  Thirty-six years had elapsed since the great Famine, only one generation, and he found the famous root of Virginia a greater favourite than ever.  From Slane, in Meath, he writes that potatoes are a great article of culture at Kilcock, where he found them grown for cattle; store bullocks were fed upon them, and they were even deemed good food for horses when mixed with bran.  In Slane itself, the old custom, which was the chief cause of the famine of 1740, still prevailed; for he says, the people there were not done taking up their potatoes till Christmas.  The potato culture, he elsewhere remarks, has increased twenty-fold within the last twenty years, all the hogs in the country being fattened on them.  They were usually given to them half-boiled.  Wherever he went he almost invariably found the food of the people, at least for nine months of the year, to be potatoes and milk, excepting parts of Ulster, where they had oatbread, and sometimes flesh meat.  In the South, for the labourers of Sir Lucius O’Brien and their families, consisting of two hundred and sixty-seven souls, the quantity of potatoes planted, as appears from a paper given to him, was forty-five acres and a quarter, ranging from a quarter of an acre to four acres for each family.  As to yield, the lowest he gives is forty barrels per acre, Irish of course; and the highest reported to him was at Castle Oliver, near Bruff, namely, one hundred and fifty barrels (Bristol).[32] The average produce of the entire country he gives at three hundred and twenty-eight bushels per acre—­about sixty-six barrels.  “Yet, to gain this miserable produce,” he says, “much old hay, and nineteen-twentieths of all the dung in the kingdom is employed.”  Potatoes grown on the coast were frequently sent to Dublin by sea; and Lord Tyrone told Arthur Young at Curraghmore, that much of the potatoes grown about Dungarvan were sent thither, together with birch-brooms.  The boats were said to be freighted with fruit and timber!

Amongst the endless varieties of the potato which appeared from time to time, that known as the “apple” was the best in quality, and stood its ground the longest, having been a favourite for at least seventy or eighty years.  The produce recorded above as raised by Mr. Wynne Baker was as we have seen from this species, what kind gave the still greater yield at Castle Oliver is not recorded.  Thus it is perfectly clear that in 1780, and even before that time, the staple food of the Irish nation was once again the potato.  In fact, it was cultivated to a far greater extent than before 1740, which caused the population to increase with wonderful rapidity.[33]