NOTES ON IRISH NATURAL HISTORV. 115 



After landing at Ban try I strolled over Lord Bearhaven's 

 park and garden, and here I first found Polypodium vulgare 

 in its very divided form, as discovered by Mr. Mackay in 

 County Wicklow : it grows abundantly on the park-wall, just 

 out of the town. The growth of some exotics in the garden 

 is of extraordinary luxuriance : on the lawn before the house 

 are some ten or twelve hydrangeas, the smallest of which is 

 twenty long steps in circumference, and the one which I sup- 

 posed the largest, thirty-three steps, or at least a hundred 

 feet. Several species of Erica, and amongst them Erica 

 Mediterranea, also several Fuschias, were of equally luxuri- 

 ant proportions, and the laurel contended in vigour with the 

 native arbutus. 



I walked up the hill at the back of the house, through a 

 herd of fallow deer, which seemed infected by the luxurious 

 and enervating calm of the evening, and would hardly rise at 

 my approach. The summit of this eminence was covered 

 with rooks and jackdaws; I think there must have been mil- 

 lions, they really blackened the sky when they rose, which 

 they did with reluctance and soon settled again, some on the 

 ground, and some on little clumps of young firs, which bent 

 down with the unusual weight. This eminence commands a 

 glorious view over the Bay, its islands, Glengarriff, the Caha 

 Hills, &c., and the extraordinary fall of Adrigoil in Hungry 

 Hill was just visible, like a thread of silvery light. This cas- 

 cade appears little known ; few, if any of our tourists have 

 visited it, and I had never by any chance heard even its name 

 until now, in its immediate neighbourhood : it is said to be 

 850 feet in height, which I think will exceed any other in the 

 kingdom. I lingered till the last ray of the setting sun had 

 vanished from the Caha Hills and the distant Reeks, — till 

 the golden flame-tint had left the north-west, and was suc- 

 ceeded by a green indescribably beautiful ; while the zenith, 

 and indeed nearly all the other parts of the sky, were of that 

 exquisite colour which I suppose the Latin poets mean by 

 the word purpureus, as in 



''• Largior hie campos aether et lumine vestit 

 Piirpureo ; " 



and many other passages. This colour rapidly faded, and as 

 night was fast approaching I made the best of my way to 

 Ban try. 



There are few who happened to be in Ireland on the 30th 

 of July, 1839, that will forget it. The flood-gates of heaven 

 seemed opened, and earth appeared about to be visited by a 

 second deluge : men, women, children, cows, sheep, goats, 



