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VOLUME XX. 



AN IRISH NATURALIST IN SPAIN IN THE 

 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 



BY NATHANIEL COLGAN, M.R.T.A. 



Two years ago while turning over the second-hand volumes 

 displayed on a barrow in Aston' s Place, that favoured haunt 

 of Dublin book-hunters, my eye was caught by a small 

 quarto, full-bound and with richly-tooled back, which lay 

 half buried under a set of Blair's Sermons. On examination 

 the quarto turned out to be the third edition of a Spanish 

 treatise on the Natural History of the Peninsula, written 

 by a native of Ireland and published at Madrid in 1789. 

 A payment of two pence was sufficient to effect a transfer 

 of the property in the volume from the literary man in 

 charge of the barrow to the writer of these notes, the 

 transaction giving equal satisfaction to both parties. 



The full title of the book runs thus : — Introdiiccion a la 

 Historia Natural y a la Geografia "Fisica dc Espana por D. 

 Guillermo Bowles. It cannot be said that Don Guillermo 

 Bowles is unknown in these countries. The all-embracing 

 Dictionary of National Biography has, indeed, a good deal 

 to say about him, most of it drawn from Don Joseph 

 Nicolas de Azara's preface to the second edition of the 

 Introduccion, reproduced in the third edition ; yet for all 

 that it is safe to assume that very little is known of Bowles 

 or of his work in his native country, and that a few notes 

 on both may be acceptable to readers of this journal. 



William Bowles was born in a village near Cork about 

 the year 1705. Having devoted his youth and early 



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