Notes on the Flora of the Aran Islands. 109 



luxuriant, the individual pinnules of some old fronds which I 

 plucked measuring fully one three-eiL,dUh inclies in their lar- 

 gest diameter. This fern is rather capriciously distributed 

 over the island, and it seemed to me as if the aljsence or ])res- 

 ence of the species depended largely on the direction of the 

 limestone fissures with relation to the prevailing winds, tlnnigh 

 on this point my observations were not numerous enough to 

 enable me to speak with confidence. Arabis hirsicta was 

 plentiful in many parts of the island, and curious pads of Carcx 

 pulicaris were found here and there filling up hemispherical 

 basins in the limestone, w^here, like sponges, they hold the 

 rain water wdth sufficient tenacity to carry the species alive 

 through the droughts of summer. A single plant of Juniper 

 was known to grow in the island when I arrived there, and ni}' 

 discover^" of a second plant, near the light-house in the south, 

 gave deep satisfaction to the Inisheer boy who accompanied 

 me in my rambles. 



For the first-known Juniper had almost succumbed under the 

 severe strain of recurring Palm Sunda5'S, when it has been 

 forced to furnish the island population of some sixty families 

 with their emblematic palm. Throughout Ireland, as is well 

 known, the Yew does duty for the eastern palm on such 

 occasions ; but the tree is nowhere found in the islands at 

 present, though clear evidence of its former existence in Aran- 

 more is afforded b}^ the place-name, Oghil. 



The boy, Peter Donohoe, who assisted at the discovery of this 

 second Juniper, was w^ell versed in Irish plant-lore, and I was 

 able to get from him an Irish name for Sediun anglicum, a 

 species I had never previously heard named in the native 

 tongue. This stone-crop is knowm in Inisheer as Poureen- 

 shingan, or the Ant-fold, a name wdiich is far from being so 

 obviously appropriate as the Aran name for the Maiden-IIair, 

 Dubh-chosaeh' or Black-footed (plant). The fitness of this 

 native name for the stone-crop w^as however fully vindicated, 

 when the boy, lifting up a large pad of the plant from wdiere 

 it grew on a slab of warm limestone, showed me underneath 

 a swarm of ants scurrying over the rock in a comic state of 

 panic. Seangan is the common Irish word for ant, ^\\6.poureen 

 the local name for a peculiar kind of roofed pen or fold made 



Pronounced almost as Dhoo-hiissock, 



