Skye or Achill?
Many an Irish countryman, as indeed many a Scottish, is aided by little local industries, of which peat is the most important. It gives warmth to the neighbours of the many Irish hags, in mid Ireland as in the West, and to the poorer inhabitants of Skye, for example, very much in the same fashion as the poplar trees to many French villagers. The peat and the trees save winter from being a dead season. By the West Coast of Ireland are other little industries sometimes alleged to be extinct by remoter critics. That queer weed which was at one time marketed very widely as " Iceland Moss " is reaped in some quantity for the sake of its " thickening " qualities and is doubtless as wholesome as it is effective. The Kelp industry still keeps alive and seaweed is found to be a most potent manure. In some western regions, of which Skye is one, the visitor laments the obvious decay of old sources of wealth, especially the sea fisheries. Boats are fewer and the stone barriers built for netting fish have long since fallen into ruin. West Ireland is a special haunt of the lobster, and some of the efforts to revive the valuable industry in bays where lack of transport has half destroyed it are not altogether vain.
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