NOTES ON IRISH NATURAL HISTORY. 21 



and the paddle-wheels aft, and no wider than the deck. The 

 locks and artificial cuts seemed endless ; it is called navigat- 

 ing the Shannon, but you really navigate little canals, twelve 

 or fifteen feet wide, for which the Shannon supplies the wa- 

 ter. However, when we arrived at Portumna, a steamer of 

 the usual build took us through Lough Derg, the scenery of 

 which is certainly interesting, but can scarcely be called fine. 

 This steamer took us to Killaloe, where a boat awaited us, 

 which, with trotting or galloping horses, conveyed us through 

 a perfect labyrinth of locks to Limerick. To compare the 

 navigation of the Shannon with that of the Thames, is sheer 

 nonsense. The Thames is a vast and deep tide-river, at all 

 times navigable, but at high water capable of floating the 

 largest ships ever built : the Shannon is wide, but so shallow 

 in some places, and so rapid in others, that it never can be 

 rendered of any mercantile importance. Limerick has in it a 

 great deal to occupy the time and attention. It is divided 

 into the new and old towns ; the new town is very respecta- 

 ble in its way, a sort of Pavement-Moorfields-looking place, 

 and a long straight street, and the houses much of a same- 

 ness ; but the old town, on the Clare side of the Shannon, 

 took my fancy amazingly. I ascended the tower of its an- 

 tiquated and mis-shapen Cathedral, and gathered Scolopen- 

 drium, and Ceterach, and Rut a-mur aria, from its summit, 

 and looked over that ancient tovm, which is known by the 

 opprobrious epithet of " English ^ 



I visited Castle Connell, a poor little village six Irish 

 miles from Limerick, much frequented on account of the ap- 

 pearance of the Shannon, which is here very shallow, and 

 runs over a bed of stones. I crossed to the Clare side in a 

 little boat, and the boatmen wxre very impressive in their 

 conversation touching the danger of the passage (which they 

 perform twenty times a-day), and told me the falls were con- 

 sidered the finest in Europe, and that Mr. English (Inglis) 

 had been there. On the Clare side are the grounds of Sir 

 Hugh Massey, and the view of the river from the " hanging 

 gardens " as they are termed, is very pretty : there is a con- 

 stant ripple for half a mile. Having heard so much of Mr. 

 Inglis at this place, I looked into his book, and find, after a 

 page of grandiloquence, the following wind up. — " None of 

 the Welsh waterfalls, nor the Geisbach in Switzerland, can 

 compare for a moment, in grandeur and effect, with the ra- 

 pids of the Shannon." On the walls of the hanging gardens 

 I saw abundance of Ceterach, Asplenium Ruta-muraria, 

 Adiantum-nigrmn, and Tricliomanes, Scolopendrium vulga- 

 re, Lomaria spicant, and Polypodium vulgare. 



