1900.] COI.GAN AND SCUI.I.Y. — Remarks 07i Cybele Hihernica. 57 



his Remarks : — " Connemara is, so far as our knowledge goes, far 

 and away wetter than the south-west (unless at altitudes unsuit- 

 able for comparison.) K3demore, in Connemara, has a mean of 

 8179 inches for sixteen years . . . No doubt there are valleys 

 in the Kerry Reeks that would perhaps eclipse Connemara, but 

 we have not got the proof" Now the required proof it so 

 happens is to be had in Mr. Hart's own Flora of Donegal^ 

 where (p. 345) he gives us the average rainfall for the Gap of 

 Dunloe as 91*5 inches, and goes on to say — ''Parts of Kerry 

 receive the heaviest rainfall in Ireland . . . Next to these 

 the wettest portion would be found in Galway amongst the 

 Twelve Bens . . . Kerr^Ms nearly twice as wet as Donegal 

 in its wettest parts. Galway is about intermediate." 



Clearly we have to deal with two Mr. Harts — the author of 

 the Flora of Dojiegal and the author of Remarks on the Second 

 Edition of Cyhele^ and we find one of these, to use an eastern 

 image, eating the words of the other. Which of them are we 

 to believe? We think we may fairly claim that our generali- 

 sations on Irish rainfall still hold the field. No doubt these 

 generalisations might have been supported by a more imposing 

 display of statistics, and our whole section on climate might 

 have been easily expanded to 100 pagCvS in emulation of our 

 critic, who has devoted no less than 67 pages of his Donegal 

 Flora to tables of barometric pressures, of rainfalls, and of 

 temperatures, marine and terrestrial. But after all climate 

 is only of interest to the botanist in so far as it demonstrably 

 affects plant distribution, and the majority of the readers of 

 Cybele will rather bless than revile us for the terseness of our 

 paragraph on this subject. 



The Gulf Stream. — As for the Gulf Stream, we have only to 

 oppose to the opinions of Dr. Murray and the Prince of 

 Monaco cited by Mr. Hart, those of Dr. W. B. Carpenter 

 and Mr. R. H. Scott, F.R.S., of the Meteorological Council. 

 The former in his article " Atlantic Ocean," in the last edition 

 of the Encyclop(zdia Britannica (vol. iii., p. 25) says: — "The 

 same principle once admitted" [the principle of a great 

 oceanic circulation, carrying the cold polar waters southward 

 underneath a northward flow of warm water from the equator] 

 " fully accounts for that amelioration of the cold of north- 

 western Kurope, which, as already .shown, cannot be fairly 



