Galway In Days Gone By

1919

Hope at Christmas

Looking back over the things written at Christmas for many years, one finds that the note of hope has always dominated.

Last year it seemed that a nightmare had ended, and that a new era had opened. So far as the principal combatants were concerned, an Armistice had been signed.

The ideals of President Wilson rang throughout the world. Ireland had swung in with the flowing tide: in the December elections she had almost unreservedly placed all her hopes in the Peace Conference.

A new era of social endeavour had begun. Labour was to be emancipated from wage slavery; healthy and clean living, better housing accommodation and a fuller citizenship were to be provided for the hewers of wood and the drawers of water. Women were no longer to be compelled to obey legislative enactments in the shaping of which they had no part.

To-day, we are much sadder, though perhaps a little wiser. How little has been done; how much remains!

Improved crop

During recent years the Department’s efforts have been directed towards the possibility of further improving the crop by an efficient system of seed selection. The improved seed obtained as a result of the experiments is distributed to farmers in the barley districts.

Information has been received that the Malting and Seed Barley Competitions held at the recent Brewers’ Exhibition in the Royal Agricultural Hall, Islington, London, the World’s Championship Prize for the finest bushel of malting barley of any growth from any county, or colony, exhibited in any class, was won by barley grown by Mr. Edmond Doyle, Warrington, Kilkenny, from seed supplied last spring by the Departments’ Central Plant Breeding Station at Ballinacurra.

Mr. Doyle also won the Mark Lane Champion Challenge Cup for the best sample of seed barley grown in the United Kingdom or Colonies.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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