The Rev. Dr. Hincks on the Flora of Ireland. 9 



ignorance, than that they wantonly assert falsehoods. In 

 judging of such works as those of Threlkeld and K'Eogh, 

 we should consider them as abridgements of Gerard and his 

 followers for medical purposes. No one now refers for de- 

 scriptions to Parkinson, How, Merret, or even Ray, but these 

 writers preserve to us the knowledge of their times, and for 

 this purpose are referred to. In 1711 a Botanical Lecture- 

 ship was established in Dublin College, to which a small 

 physic garden was then or soon after annexed, in connexion 

 with the medical school, but I have not traced any immediate 

 benefit to the science derived from it. The Dublin Society, 

 founded in 1731, by the attention it paid to agriculture and 

 planting, both intimately connected with botany, indirectly 

 contributed to its progress 5 but a society called the Physico- 

 historical, about 1746, more directly contributed to our 

 knowledge of the plants of Ireland by employing a botanist 

 (name not recorded) to examine the county Down, the most 

 important and interesting of the counties in Ulster, both on 

 account of its varied surface and fertility, and its containing 

 the Mourne Mountains. The list of plants collected by this 

 person was submitted, I think, to Dr. Rutty of Dublin 

 (esteemed a good naturalist for his time), and was published 

 in the history of that county, attributed to Harris. The 

 same Society sent Dr. Charles Smith to the south of Ireland, 

 who published under their authority his histories of Water- 

 ford and Cork, and afterwards, the Society having termi- 

 nated, that of Kerry, at his own risk. Mr. Mackay seems 

 to have confounded these histories with the statistical ac- 

 counts published under the auspices of the Dublin Society 

 at a much later period ; but he speaks of Dr. Smith's his- 

 tories as possessing considerable accuracy with regard to the 

 localities of plants, as he found during his botanical excur- 

 sions through that part of the country. The next Irish pub- 

 lication on the subject was " Dr. Rutty's Natural History of 

 the county of Dublin," in 1772, in which, though Mr. Lee had 

 explained the Linnaean system in England in 1760, and 

 Hudson had adopted it in the Flora Anglica in 1762, the 

 old system was retained, which, considering the age of Dr. 

 Rutty, and the length of time he had been collecting his 

 materials amidst the avocations of a laborious profession, is 

 not to be wondered at or censured. Whatever useful inform- 

 ation it may contain, Rutty's work appeared to me less cal- 

 culated to serve the purposes of an Irish Flora than that of 

 Threlkeld. Previous to 1780, we had then lists of plants 

 by Threlkeld, K'Eogh, and Rutty ; of the rare plants of 

 Down, by an unknown person, but under the direction of a 



