Motes 071 the Flora of Hoivth. 175 



low neck of land that joins the headland to the mainland ; 

 where 



" All the sands that left and right 

 The grassy isthmus-ridge confine, 

 In yellow bars lie bare and bright 

 Among the sparkling brine " ; 



for here the wastes and banks are gay with yellow Melilot, 

 and scarlet Poppies, and pink Convolvulus, and many rarer 

 plants that twine amid the lavish profusion of summer 

 vegetation. 



The wild-flowers of Howth can boast the distinction of 

 having a book devoted to themselves. Mr. Hart's excellent 

 little Flora' is well-known to most of my readers, and 

 ought to be well-known to all of them. Many a time, while I 

 was still living in Belfast, did I pore enviously over its pages, 

 for the Flora of Howth contains well nigh four-score of 

 species which either are unknown in the North-east, or are so 

 rare there as to constitute the prize of a day's collecting ; 

 indeed man}^ of them are plants which to any Irish botanist 

 possess considerable interest on account of their restricted 

 range in this country. Nor have the botanical resources of 

 Howth been yet quite exhausted. During the course of several 

 rambles over the hill last summer, I was much pleased to find 

 one or two species that are not recorded among the 545 native 

 or naturalized plants which are enumerated as inhabitants of 

 Howth in the work referred to ; also a few others, which, 

 though recorded from Howth by previous writers, were 

 excluded b}" Mr. Hart on the ground of their absence there at 

 the present time. When Miss R. Mahaffy communicated to me 

 several interesting additions which she has made within the 

 last few years, it occurred to me that our combined observa- 

 tions might be worthy of publication in the pages of the Irish 

 Naturalist ; and I have endeavoured^to make the present paper 

 as far as possible complete, by including any published additions 

 to the flora (so far as I was aware of them) which have 

 appeared since the publication of Mr. Hart's " Flora." These 

 latter are few in number, and are soon enumerated. In the 

 Journal of Botany for 1891 (p. 377).. Mr. Hart contributes three 

 additional species— the Portland Spurge, Eiiphorbia portlan- 

 dica, found on the rocky islet of Ireland's Eye by Sir Robert 



'The Flora of Howth, by H. C. Hart, B. A., F.L.S. Dublin: Hodges, 

 Figgis, and Co., 1887, 3s. 6d. 



