[December, 1898. 2-]^ 



CYBEI.H HIBERNICA.^ 



" Many generations of Men are come and gone from this Earth . . . 

 yet the Earth itself with its verdant Furniture abideth for ever."— 

 ThR£;IvKEI,D, Synopsis Stirpium Hibernicariini, 1'J26. 



As the new Cyde/e Hibomica lies open before us, filled with 

 the plant-lore which man}^ generations of botanists have 

 laboured to acquire and to set forth, our minds w^ander back 

 through the dim galleries of time ; from the present, with its 

 cut-and-dry knowledge of the flora of our country, to those 

 pre-Linnean days when Caleb Threlkeld ("the Science of 

 Botany being not only generally useful, but even absolutely 

 necessary to us mortals" in his opinion), showed his appre- 

 ciation of its importance by compiling the first Irish Flora 

 one hundred and seventy-tw^o years ago. Irish botany was 

 an almost unknown field when the old clergyman-physician 

 published his modest duodecimo, with its cumbrous names, 

 its grave herbalistic instructions, and its scanty plant-localities. 

 No doubt its compilation absorbed many a studious hour, as 

 the author sat in his house in Dublin, and frequently occupied 

 his thoughts, as he " used to wander through the woods and 

 dales" with Ray's Synopsis Vi\i.A^i his arm, or " perambulate in 

 Company of ingenious Men, to have ocular Demonstration of 

 the Plants themselves in their native Soil." In one respect 

 at least the good doctor set an example which man}^ of his 

 successors might well have followed up. He took pains to 

 find out and record the Irish names of the plants of which he 

 wrote — an important feature absent from almost every Irish 

 Flora published since, and the inclusion of which forms one 

 of the pleasantest features of the new Cybele. Nine years 

 after the appearance of Threlkeld's work, John Keogh 

 published his Bota7iologia Hibcrnica, but this book w^as almost 

 purely a herbal, and did little to advance the knowledge of 



* Contributions towards a Cybeic Hibcrnica, being outHnes 

 of the geographical distribution of plants in Ireland. Second edition, 

 founded on the papers of the late Ai^exander Goodman More, 

 F.R.vS.E., F.IvS., M.R.I.A., by Nathaniei. Coi^GAN, M.R.I.A., and 

 REGINAI.D W. Scuivi^Y, F.L.S. Dubhn: Ponsonby; London: Gurney 

 and Jackson, 1S98. Svo. pp. 96 + 538. Map. 12s. 6d. 



