34 DUBLIN NATUAAL HISTOKT SOCIETY. 



taken up warmly some time ago, ere the events of the last few years had so fear- 

 fully thinned the Irish-speaking portion of our peasantry. As it is, I do not think 

 much additional information can be gained. Before concluding, I shall crave 

 your indulgence for a moment or two, while I endeavour to impress on you the 

 necessity and the importance of increased exertion, and more diligent examina- 

 tions of such districts as have not yet been carefully explored. The subject is 

 far from being exhausted, and beyond a doubt the researches of a few years more 

 will make great additions to our Flora. I am induced to make these remarks 

 from considering that in a hurried passage through a district where we spent 

 but three days in all, though it would take a month to examine it properly, and 

 at a season too, when, especially in a limestone district, many of the plants had 

 faded so completely as to be beyond the reach of the keenest eye, my friend and 

 I had the good luck to fall in with so many objects of interest. This proves 

 what might be done there by a more prolonged and minute search at a more fa- 

 vourable season ; and I am sure the same observation will apply with equal force 

 to most districts in Ireland, for few places indeed, save those in the immediate 

 vicinity of Dublin, have been thoroughly explored at all seasons. Much, very 

 much has been done, but much remains to do ; and when a flying visit to any of 

 our remoter country parts almost invariably results in the discovery of something 

 new, what may not be expected were there an opportunity of instituting in those 

 localities a rigorous search, to be carried out carefully at all seasons of the year? 

 And now, gentlemen, with many thanks for the kind attention with which you 

 have listened to the reading of a paper so deficient in anything that could inte- 

 rest you, and so faulty in its arrangement and preparation, I conclude my notes 

 of our botanical excvu-sion in Clare. 



Mr. Whitla, whohad accompanied Mr. O'Mahony in the excursion, then seve- 

 rally described the more interesting species that had been collected, noting their 

 peculiarities of growth, particularizing species found in that arid limestone soil, 

 and which in other localities were principally in marshy grounds. He could not 

 avoid dwelling upon and detailing the valuable researches of the older botanists, 

 especially with reference to Dr. Eaton. Much had been accomplished formerly 

 that were of late years recorded as new discoveries. Mr. Whitla went very fully 

 into this subject, of which he appeared to possess much information, and to have 

 taken up with great zeal. 



MARCH 10, 1854. 



ON THE FRUCTIFICATION OF THE GENUS DESMARESTIA. BY GILBERT SANDERS, 



M.B.I.A. 



At the request of my friend, Dr. Allman, I beg to present to the Dublin 

 Natural History Society a short description of the fructification of the Desma- 

 restia, as observed in the species Ligulata. Dr. Harvey, in both editions of his 

 Manual, and in the Phycologia, as well as every other algological authority I 

 am acquainted with, records the fructification of Desmarestia as unknown. I 

 was recently engaged in microscopically examining the structure of several 

 specimens of Desmarestia ligulata, when I observed some very minute brown 

 dots on the pinna I had under the microscope, which were resolved by a higher 

 power into small defined tubercles, through the pellucid walls of which I saw 

 assemblages of angular spores of the usual pink colour of the spores of the Flo- 

 rideae. Further examination showed that these tubercles were pretty freely 

 distributed over both surfaces of the pinna, on the margins as well as on the flat 

 surfaces ; those seen on the margins, being in profile, showed a hemispherical 

 outline, the greater part of which projected beyond the margin. I have no 

 doubt of these tubercles being the fruit, and that they are to be regarded as 

 conceptacula and superficial. I examined pinnae from two other specimens of 



