[ 75 I 

 NOTES ON THE FLORA OF Tlllv ARAN ISLANDS. 



BY NATHANIlvU COI.GAN. 



Smai,l insular areas have always had a peculiar attraction for 

 students of Natural History, perhaps for this reason, anions 

 other and weightier ones, that they present to the investi^^ator 

 a field of inquiry clearly defined by unmistakable natural 

 boundaries, and not so extended as to discourage minute and 

 thoroughgoing examination. Just such an area is to be found 

 in Galway Bay, in the group of three limestone islands known 

 as the South Isles of Aran, a group which amongst botanists, 

 at least, has made its attractions felt from an early period. The 

 first investigator to visit the islands was Dr. Edward Lhwyd, 

 that intrepid explorer of the Irish flora, who in his account of 

 his plant-hunting " On the Mountains of Keri," in the year 

 1700, tells us how his scientific curiosity was "frustrated by 

 the Tories."' To Lhwyd we owe the earliest record of the 

 Maiden-Hair Fern in the Arans. A century later (1805), we 

 find Dr. Mackay, author of the " Flora Hibernica," visiting 

 the group and discovering 'Cii^x^^h.^ Hdianthcmum camtm; and 

 after him, at more or less length}' intervals, comes a succession 

 of botanists down to Mr. H. C. Hart, who made a careful surv^ey 

 of the islands in the summer of 1869. Mr. Hart's results 

 were published in 1875 in the form of a detailed flora carr^'ing 

 up the number of species for the Arans from 159, recorded by 

 Dr. E. P. Wright in 1866, to a total of 372. Finally, in 1S90, 

 two English botanists, Messrs. J. E. Nowers and James G. 

 Wells, visiting the islands at a season two months earlier than 

 Mr. Hart, succeeded in adding no less than 42 species to his total. 

 It will thus be seen that no great extension of the number of 

 Aran species was to be looked for from further examination of 

 the group ; and it was with no such expectation I visited the 

 islands towards the end of last May (1892). My object was 

 merely to make acquaintance with the peculiar Aran species, 

 to re-discover, if possible, the long derelict Ajuga pyramidalis, 

 one of the rarest of Irish plants, first found in Araumoie by 



1 FUl. Trails., vol. xxvii., 1712. It need hardly be said that the 1 ones 

 here referred to professed no definite pohtical principles, but were mere 

 footpads who found in the fastnesses of the Kerry Highlands a favour- 

 able field for brigandage. 



