6o The Irish Naturalist, [ March, 



place of origin roughly resembles his own, but whose age of 

 family vastly exceeds his. The true Irish native who believes 

 he came from Spain will be suited with St. Patrick's Cabbage ; 

 the Ulsterman with the Varying Hare ; the Anglo-Norman 

 with TrifoUum repens — clover in England, but shamrock in 

 Ireland. To the settler from England of some generations' 

 standing, the Common Frog (if we are to trust tradition) would 

 be a happy zoological partner. The English immigrant who 

 has recently come to stay may be compared to the Magpie, 

 and the visitor who will flit back straightway across St. 

 George's Channel to the solitary Nightingale that once was 

 seen on Irish soil — only that visitor was shot. 



This recognition of distributional types among Irish 

 animals and plants calls us to remember famous men. We 

 have this year mourned the loss of two naturalists w^ho did 

 much for Irish science. Of the value of Alexander G. More's 

 work there is no need for me to speak, but it would be un- 

 gracious not to recall the philosophical spirit in which he 

 approached the study of distribution, and the importance of 

 his work in applying Watson's botanical distributional types' 

 to two groups of animals, the Birds^ and the Butterflies. ^ The 

 name of Valentine Ball I would mention, not only as that of a 

 hearty friend and original member of our Club, but as a direct 

 link with the naturalists of a past generation. His father's 

 house was the meeting-place of a group of men whose brilliant 

 labours threw a halo round British science in the first half of 

 this century. Prominent among these men was Edward 

 Forbes, and no one who takes up this subject of distribution 

 can afford to neglect his classical paper"* in which the vSpecial 

 features of the Irish flora are treated w4th so masterly a hand. 

 Into the labours of such men — Forbes and Thompson, Haliday 

 and Jukes, we have entered. May we be worthy of our trust. 



Of the various problems presented by the distribution of 

 animals and plants in Ireland, I wish to dwell on the remark- 

 abl'e mingling of northern and southern forms, so well 

 typified by the mingling of the northern and southern Ckibs 

 of the new Union. This mingling has been often alluded to 



' H. C. Watson — " Cybele Britannica." I^ondon, 1847. 



=* Ibis {2), vol. i., 1865. 2 Zoologist, vol. xvi., 185S, p. 6018. 



< Mem. Geo!. Surv, Gi. Brit., vol. i., 1846. 



