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 NOTES ON THE FLORA OF COUNTY DUBUN. 



BY NATHANIKI. COI^GAN. 



It is now more than a century and a-half since the genial 

 enthusiast, Caleb Threlkeld, laid the foundations of Irish 

 botany in his well-known Syiiopsis Stirphwi Hibcrnica-nim, 

 indited, as his preface tells us, in the year 1726 from his house 

 in Mark's-alley, Dublin. Threlkeld's work, while it deals 

 with the flora of Ireland in general, has special reference to 

 the native plants of the environs of Dublin, and giving, as it 

 does, definite localities in the neighbourhood of the city for 

 some 140 species of phanerogams and ferns, may fairly be 

 regarded as a first essay at a County Dublin Flora. From 

 Threlkeld's time onwards, the plants of the county have 

 engaged the attention of a series of botanists, professional and 

 dilletante. As the seat of the University, the Royal Dublin 

 Society, and the Medical Schools, the Irish capital became 

 naturally the chief centre of Irish botanical science, and the 

 surrounding country the favourite field for its practical study ; 

 so that as regards the more immediate surroundings of the 

 city, perhaps no district in Ireland has had its flora more 

 thoroughly explored. But from the very nature of the case 

 this exploration was anything but systematic ; and the only 

 serious attempt at a painstaking botanical survey of the 

 county, that carried out by Dr. Walter Wade towards the close 

 of last century,' is in many points incomplete. Most of all is 

 it defective in the study of distribution. Large tracts of the 

 county, in fact, were never examined by Wade, and con- 

 sequently little reliance can be placed upon his determination 

 of comparative rarity or abundance of species. With all its 

 shortcomings, however. Wade's Catalogue of Native Plants of 

 the County of Dublin is a meritorious work. In one respect 

 especially, is the author deserving of unstinted praise— he has 

 made it a point to see for himself every species he records. 

 All through his catalogue he makes inveyii take the place of 



^ Catalogtis systematicus Plantanim Indigenarum in Coniitatu Dublinensi 

 Inventartim—Dnhlm, 1794. In a rapid survey of the botanical Hterature 

 for the county Dr. Rutty 's Natural History of the County of Duhlin (1772) 

 scarcely deserves mention His chapters on plants are little more than 

 a treatise on medical and economic botany. 



