The Irish Field Clubs. 215 



the vacancy in the Secretaryship caused by the retirement of 

 Mr. Browne. At the commencement of the year the member- 

 ship was 128; since then, the increase steadily continues, so 

 that at the time of writing it has reached 160. The summer 

 excursions, now drawing to a close, have been enjoj^able and 

 instructive, and the pleasant re-unions with the Belfast Club 

 at the Boyne, and with the Cork and L,imerick Clubs at Fer- 

 moy, will not soon be forgotten. The Dublin Naturalists' 

 Field Club has a successful and useful future before it, and 

 especially hopeful are the prospects of a better knowledge of, 

 and a closer bond of union with our fellow-Clubs of the north 

 and south. May we all feel, and may we be encouraged by 

 the thought, that there is a fair field before us, and that 

 we are fellow-travellers in the march of scientific progress, 

 able and willing to help ourselves and to help each other. 



MATRICARIA DISCOIDEA, DC, IN IRELAND. 



BY NATHANIEL, COI.GAN. 



On the 22nd of August last, while botanizing in the Dublin 

 Mountains, I gathered an unfamiliar rayless composite growing 

 on a granite freestone track alongside the Rathmines Water- 

 works Reservoir at the head of Glenasmoil. Two da} r s later, the 

 same plant turned up, quite unexpectedly and in much greater 

 abundance, on the footpath of the Glenamuck road, near 

 Carrickmines, fully seven miles distant from the first station ; 

 and, once again, on the 29th August, I came across it growing 

 in an angle of waste ground at Iyispopple cross-roads, eighteen 

 miles distant from Glenasmoil. On examination the plant 

 proved to be Matricaria discoidea, DC. The Carrickmines 

 specimens agreed perfectly with the description in the 

 Prodromus (vi. 50), the seed-apex being naked or obscurely 

 crowned. In the Glenasmoil and Iyispopple plants, however, 

 the seed was crowned with two distinct teeth, tightly clasping 

 the floret so as to render it quite persistent. This toothed 

 form of the seed, not mentioned in the Prodromus, is well 

 described in Asa Gray's " Flora of North America," 1886, 

 p. 364, where it is stated that the seed-crown "is occasionally 

 produced into one or two conspicuous, oblique auricles of 



