96 The Irish Naturalist. 



From a survey of the literature, the conclusion was irresis- 

 tible that the question as to the species of the Shamrock had 

 never been seriously studied by any competent botanist, per- 

 haps because the subject was considered too trivial for serious 

 treatment, perhaps because any attempt to go into it ex- 

 haustively may have been checked at the outset by the 

 thought that the Irishman was content to wear, as the 

 national badge, any w^ell-marked trifoliate leaf. Such a 

 thought, however, could only have entered the mind of an 

 alien. Every Irishman, and every Englishman long domi- 

 ciled in Ireland, well knows that the Irish peasant displays 

 great care in the selection of his Shamrock. There is for him 

 one true Shamrock and only one ; but unfortunately for the 

 inquiring botanist, the marks by which the Irishman, may we 

 saj'', distinguishes the plant, are very largely negative. He 

 can tell us what the Shamrock is not, rather than what it is. 

 First of all the mystic plant is not a clover, in the next place 

 it never flowers, and finally it refuses to grow on alien soil. 

 It would not be true to say that my countr3mien have no 

 positive marks by which to recognize the plant, for they 

 usuall}^ demand that it should have slender creeping stems 

 and small neat leaves, but these characters are altogether too 

 vague to have any botanical value. 



There was clearly but one method of determining the 

 species of the Shamrock. Specimens, each certified by a 

 competent native authority as the true Shamrock, proper to 

 be worn in the hat as the national badge, must be procured 

 from various parts of Ireland on or about Saint Patrick's 

 Day,' and if, as was not improbable, it should prove diflicult, 

 from examination of these necessarily undeveloped specimens, 

 to fix the species with certainty, then each must be grown on 

 to its flow^ering season and then identified. 



Working on these lines, and excluding the city of Dublin 

 and its environs from the field of inquiry, since the fine 

 instinct which guides the Irish Celt in the discrimination of 

 the real Shamrock becomes inevitably blunted by contact 

 with the corrosive rationalism of cities, I collected thirteen 

 specimens from the following eleven counties: Derrj^, Antrim, 

 Armagh, Maj-o, Clare, Cork, Wexford, Wicklow, Carlo w, 

 Queen's Co., and Roscommon. Shamrocks were thus secured 

 from northern, southern, eastern, western, and central Ire- 

 land, my correspondents in the various counties taking pains 

 to have each sample selected by a native of experience who 

 professed to know the true plant. 



Examination of these thirteen shamrocks very soon con- 

 vinced me that I could not safely venture to name them 

 off-hand, as I had never made a special study of the Trifolia, 

 and had not available for comparison a sufiiciently complete 



*The 17th of March, for the information of English readers. 



