February, 191 3. TJic his/i Naturalist, 21 
BOTANISTS OF THE NORTH OF IRELAND. 
BY REV. CANON II. W. LETT, M. A., M.R.I.A. 
(Presidential Address to the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club, 
19th November, 1912.) 
The botanists of whom this paper treats are those whose 
botanical work was carried on in the northern part of 
Ireland, or who were natives of the province of Ulster. 
Of these several will be mentioned whose names have not 
hitherto appeared in any published list of the botanists 
of Great Britain and Ireland. And a few particulars will 
be added to what has been already recorded concerning 
others w^ho have long since obtained a place amongst the 
botanists of the North of Ireland. 
Sir Hans Sloane, one of the most distinguished men 
whom the County Down has produced, was born at Killy- 
leagh in 1660. His library and natural history collections, 
bequeathed to the nation, became the nucleus of the 
British Museum. A full account of his life will be found 
in Sir W. Jardine's " Memoir of Sir Hans Sloane." and in 
the " Dictionary of National Biography." 
There w^as a contemporary of Sloane's who if anyone 
ever did, deserves to be reckoned as a botanist : this was 
Sir Arthur Rawdon, born 1662, died 1695, grandfather of the 
celebrated Earl of Moira, and ancestor of the present 
Marquess of Hastings. He built a residence at Moira, 
in Co. Down, where he had extensive gardens with " w^alks, 
vistoes, a labyrinth, canals, ponds, and groves," laid out 
in the fashion of the time around it. In all this he was 
inspired and encouraged by Sloane's consignments and 
distributions of foreign plants, and he sent out his own 
gardener, one James Harlowe, to Jamaica to bring from 
thence some exotic trees and plants for the gardens at 
Moira. There is no record of the result of this experiment. 
But Rawdon sought for trees in more temperate regions ; 
and Walter Harris, in his " History of the County Down," 
which was published in 1744, gives the names of nine trees 
and plants that were then remaining and growing well in 
the Moira Demesne. And thirtj^ years ago there were three 
