1 2 The Irish Naturalist. 



With this end in view, I found time during the past season to 

 spend some three weeks botanising in Co. Armagh, the most 

 easterly county of district lo, and the results of my investiga- 

 tion I now lay before the readers of The Irish Naturalist. 



The County of Armagh has an area of 512 square miles. 

 Its surface presents a considerable variety of petrological 

 characters, which influence the flora to a greater or less degree, 

 as I shall endeavour to show. The whole northern boundary 

 of the county is formed by lyough Neagh, in itself an interest- 

 ing botanical region. Stretching along its margin is a broad 

 belt of low, flattish land, characterised by extensive peat bogs 

 which overlie lacustrine clays supposed to be of Pliocene age. 

 In the north-east, a tongue of the basalts of Antrim penetrates 

 into the county as far as Richhill, where it is met by a corres- 

 ponding tongue of Carboniferous lyimestone, the'north-eastern 

 extremity of the great limestone area of the Central Plain. 

 North of the city of Armagh, a triangular patch of New Red 

 Sandstone intervenes between the Pliocene and the Carboni- 

 ferous. South of the basalt and limestone, the lyower Silurians 

 cover the whole centre and south-west of the county, as 

 they do a great portion of the adjoining counties of Down, 

 Monaghan, and Cavan. In the south-east, a mass of ancient 

 granites and basalts, the continuation of the Carlingford 

 mountains, extends and rises in a series of rugged isolated hills, 

 culminating in Slieve Gullion (1,893 feet). These are the only 

 important highlands in the county, the rest of the surface 

 being low, undulating, and (with the exception of the northern 

 bogs) well-tilled; north of Newtownhamilton the Silurians 

 rise in broad ridges to a height of 1,200 feet, but are cultivated 

 almost to their summit. To the south of Keady, and also 

 orth-west of Crossmaglen, groups of lakelets occupy deep 

 hollows in the Silurian rocks ; other small lakes are scattered 

 through the county, so that with the addition of lyough 

 Gullion and I,ough Neagh on the north, the waters of the 

 Blackwater on the west, and the Bann and Newry canal on 

 the east, the conditions for aquatic plant life are favourable. 

 In the extreme south-east the estuary of the Newry river 

 affords for a few miles a habitat for the characteristic flora of 

 the salt-marsh. 



Probably the earliest records of Armagh plants are those in 

 Sir Charles Coote's "Statistical Survey of the County of 



