24 The Irish Naturalist. March, 



In County Wexford I have always found that one of the 

 earhest signs of approaching spring — the spring that begins 

 a new year before the old year is quite gone — is the flowering 

 on the surface of pools of the Greater Iv^z-leaved Crowfoot 

 {Ranuncidus Lenormandi) which I almost invariably found 

 beginning to bloom in the last week of December, so that 

 it followed not long after the leafing of the Honeysuckle 

 and the singing of the Stormcock. It was always, in my 

 neighbourhood, far in advance of its small cousin Rammculus 

 hederaceus. Yet I find that the manuals make it the later 

 of the two, and begin the flowering season of hederaceus 

 in April, and that of Lenormandi in May. 



The brambles, which are as impossible of investigation 

 to ordinary mortals as the great nebula in Orion, have 

 still a borderland on which it is possible to touch ; and I 

 find that the flowering seasons of the m±ore easily distin- 

 guished kinds differ to a most extraordinary degree. The 

 kind that is far the most abundant in our own limestone 

 neighbourhood [Ruhus rusticanus, formerly called by the 

 more suitable name discolor) is from four to six weeks later 

 about coming into bloom than the very different-looking 

 kind (a form of Ruhus macrophyllus) that prevailed most 

 largely on the Silurian soils of north Wexford, and is also 

 common in the more mountainous parts of County Dublin 

 and when we get away from the limestone. I think such 

 a difference as this must be a good mark of real specific 

 distinctness. Yet in the latest edition of Babingtou's 

 Manual I find that the flowering seasons of all the brambles 

 — except a few widely separated forms — are set down as 

 exactly the sanie (July and August). 



I very much wish, too, that more attention was paid 

 in our text-books to the very attractive subject of the 

 scents of flowers. Of course we are beset with the difficulty 

 that we cannot describe the scent of a flower unless by 

 saying it is like (and it is seldom exactly like) the scent of 

 something else. But I confess that I think it too bad 

 when I find both in Babington's Manual and in Bentham's 

 Handbook a distinct statement that that delightful little 

 flower the Marsh Violet {Viola palustris), has no scent. 

 They both expressly call it scentless. Evidently neither 



