1904- Reviews. 297 



place in tbeir thoughts and in their every-day speech." While, in 

 viewing the degree of success attained in the performance of these self- 

 imposed tasks, the unaccomplished may loom large in the e3^e of the 

 author, to the reader the work accomplished appears prodigious, the 

 results invaluable, and the success complete. 



The 70-page introduction which prefaces the Flora proper, furnishes 

 interesting reading throughout. Its scope is seen from the following 

 list of the sections into which it is divided :— i. History of the Flora; 2, 

 Physical Features ; 3, Climate ; 4, Characteristics of the Flora ; 5, Rela- 

 tions of Plants and Soils ; 6, Vertical Range of Plants ; 7, Duration of 

 Plants ; 8, Popular Plant Names ; 9, Botanical Sub-division of the 

 County ; 10, Explanatory Notes on the Text. The twelve pages devoted 

 to the historical sketch constitute quite one of the most interesting 

 portions of the book ; in the archaeological aspect of the flora Mr. 

 Colgan is especially at home, and his biographical notes have a value 

 quite outside the domain of botany. The sections on floral charac- 

 teristics and soil relations are replete with valuable statistics and com- 

 parisons ; while the remarks on duration constitute a little essay on 

 that curious question — What is an annual? As regards the botanical 

 sub-division of the county, a purely artificial scheme is adopted, the 

 political division into eight baronies being used ; considering the nature 

 of the natural petrological or orographical boundaries, and the way the 

 former are complicated or altered by the nature of the superficial 

 deposits, no better scheme is available. 



Coming now to the body of the work, several features stand out con- 

 spicuously as one studies it. The conservative nomenclature of Cybele 

 Hibernica is followed throughout ; the systematic names are supple- 

 mented by a sprinkling of synonyms, names in Irish where these were 

 obtainable, current local names, many of them quaint and interesting, 

 and the common English names. The fulness of the locality-lists 

 which follow the names of the rarer plants is very striking, and the im- 

 portance of the author's own contributions to the same particularly so. 

 The county has been ransacked from end to end, and it would be hard 

 to find a spot on which Mr. Colgan's searching glance has not rested. 

 Such a spot is possibly to a small extent to be found in Lambay Island. 

 Here Agrimonia odorata. in the Flora recorded from a single station, is 

 abundant, growing amid groves of Riibtis plicattis (unrecorded for the 

 county), and oi R. leucostachys and R. pukherrimus, neither of which is re- 

 corded from this botanical district; Lamiiim intermedium and J uncus 

 obtnsiflorus, both local in the county, also grow on the island. The only 

 other stations of rarer plants which we can add to Mr. Colgan's exhaus- 

 tive lists are GlencuUen for Vicia sylvatica, and Skerries for Letnua gibba ; 

 the only record published in the book which we venture to doubt is an 

 old one, " wet slopes of the Dublin mountains " for the lowland and cal- 

 cicole Stellaria palustris. 



Next, the extreme severity of the treatment as regards the standing of 

 species as natives or otherwise excites attention. County Dublin is well 

 known as being the centre of the introduced element in the Irish flora, 



