DUBLIK NATUBAL HI8T0BT 80CIETT. 91 



Pbofessob KnrAHAN, MyD., read the following: — 

 U -^ 



ON THE DISTEIBUnON OP FEBNS IN IRELAND, WITH A LIST OP SOME OP THE 

 MOEE BEMABKABLE LOCALITIES IN WHICH THEY OCCUB. 



DuBiNo the^ many years which have elapsed since the puhlication of 

 Mackay's **riora Hibemica," the ferns have received so much attention 

 in the British Isles, and as a natural consequence the Ustof them has been 

 so much increased by the discovery of unrecorded species, and the iden- 

 tification and discrimination of others, as to render the list of them given 

 in that valuable book necessarily imperfect, and of comparatively little 

 use to the student Having been engaged, since 1848, myself, in their 

 study, and had opportunities of collecting in almost every quarter 

 of the island ; and also having had, through the kindness of friends 

 in England, opportunities of examining in a living state, authenticated 

 specimens of all the disputed or critical species, I propose to print a list of 

 the more important localities in which the several species have occurred. 



To enumerate all the localities in which common ferns occur would 

 swell the list to an inconvenient size. To such species as are of general 

 occurrence, and equally abundant in suitable stations, the simple remark, 

 ** general," is appended; fuller details being given in the case of such 

 species, as by their markedly special distribution, or peculiarity of growth 

 in certain localities, seem to be of geologic value ; the word * geologic' 

 here, and generally throughout this paper, being used, not in the con- 

 fined sense of the class or character of rock or soil, on which the plants 

 are found, but rather in the more extended and general sense — of distri- 

 bution from a geologic centre of creation. 



The districts examined by me are — 



For the North, the counties of Tyrone, Fermanagh, Monaghan, and 

 Armagh. 



For the "West and South-west, Gralway, King's County, Clare, 

 "Westmeath, Queen's County, Kilkenny, Tipperary, Limerick, Kerry, 

 Cork, and Waterford. 



For the East and South-east, Louth, Meath, Dublin, Kildare, Car- 

 low, "Wicklow, Wexford, and Cavan. 



There are no sufficiently marked features in the central counties to 

 call^for a'separate division. I have not had an opportunity of examin- 

 ing the Far North, my researches not having been pursued further north 

 than Tyrone. Wexford, in the South-east, I have never examined, but 

 some years since a friend of mine, since dead, Thomas Barry, Esq., for- 

 warded me a large collection of fresh fronds from this neighbourhood, 

 which enabled me to learn that its Fern Flora much resembles that of 

 the counties immediately adjoining. The stations examined by myself 

 in the following list are either marked with my initials, or left un- 

 marked. Those supplied fronj other sources are between inverted com- 

 mas, the letters q. y. being added in cases in which I have seen the ac- 

 tual specimens. 



