1896.] Carpente:r. — Mingling of the North ajid South. 6i 



by the originator of this Club, Prof. Haddon,' as characteristic 

 of the marine invertebrates of the west coast, and, as I have 

 remarked in a recent paper,^ the southern forms often range 

 northwards up the coast as far as Donegal, the northern ones 

 southwards as far as Cork. Within the last few months has 

 been issued by the Royal Dublin Society the full report by 

 Messrs. Holt and Calderwood^ on the rare fish found during 

 the survey of the western fishing grounds in 1 890-1. The 

 mingling of the north and the south is most markedly shown 

 here, so that the vertebrate and invertebrate marine faunas are 

 seen to present similar characters. 



Such a mingling of northern and southern species is to be 

 noted also among the land animals and plants, especially in 

 the west. The wonderful assemblage of Pyrenean and 

 Spanish plants, found in Cork, Kerry, and Galway, and 

 nowhere else in the British Isles — the Saxifrages, the Arbutus, 

 the peculiar Connemara Heaths are doubtless familiar to us all. 

 Mingled with such southern forms as these, our Galway 

 party noticed growing on Gentian Hill and elsewhere, hardly 

 above sea-level, such characteristically arctic and alpine 

 species as Dry as octopetala, Ardostaphylos uva-ursi, and Lobelia 

 dortmanna. And it is well known that in the western counties 

 are also to be found a few plants of North American origin — 

 Eriocaulon septangulare, Naias Jlexilis, Sisyriiichiurn a7iceps, 

 Spiranthes romansoviana, the two latter unknown elsewhere 

 in Europe, the first-named occurring also in Skye and other 

 isles of the Hebrides, and the second in Perthshire. Dis- 

 coveries within the last few years by Mr. Praeger and Mrs. 

 Leebody have extended the range of the Spiranthes northwards 

 to Armagh^ and Derry.^ 



It will be of interest to see how Irish animals can be referred 

 to distributional types corresponding with those of the plants 

 just mentioned. Only this year has the assembly of North- 

 American plants been matched among animals by Dr. 

 Hanitsch's researches into our Freshwater Sponges,^ showing 

 that lakes in the west of Ireland possess three North-American 

 sponges hitherto unknown in Europe. 



1 Froc. R.LA. (3), vol. i.^ p. 42. ^ Irish Nat., vol. iv., 1S95, p. 297. 



^ Set. Trans. R, D> Soc. (2), vol. v., 1895, pp. 361-512. 

 * Irish Nat, vol. ii., 1893, p. 159. s Uc, p. 228. 



^ Irish Naturalist y vol. iv., 1895, p. 122= 



