VOL IX.] RICHARD MANLIFFE BARRINGTON. 331 



that had shoA\ii themselves in his father and both his 

 uncles. 



The love for nature — particularly, at first, for wild 

 plants — grew up with him like an instinct. The beautiful 

 natural surroundings amid A^iiich his childhood was 

 spent had doubtless a strong influence on him in this 

 direction, and an elder brother, of %^'hom in after years 

 he spoke with much gratitvide, encouraged his tastes and 

 helped him in various ways. At thirteen he had begun 

 keeping a journal in which nature notes frequently occur ; 

 and in 1866 he began contributing occasional notes to 

 The Zoologist, his first being a short note on the food of 

 the Wood-Pigeon, which contains the characteristic state- 

 ment that a bird of that species shot by him in the 

 winter of 1865 '" had 98 beech-nuts in its crop." 



Entering Trinity College, Dublin, in the year in which 

 this note was written, he graduated there in 1870 as a 

 Junior Moderator in Experimental and Natural Science. 

 This was the last year in which Natural Science was 

 tacked to another subject in the Moderatorship course, 

 and Barrington was unfortunate in taking his degree a 

 year before the change that would have enabled him to 

 rely on liis favourite subject alone. Called to the Bar 

 in 1875, he soon found the work of a land valuer much 

 more to his taste than daily attendance at the Four Courts. 

 Thus even his professional work was always in great 

 measure carried on in the open air. 



An event that certainly had much influence on his 

 life was the beginning of his acquaintance with A. G. 

 More, at that time Assistant Naturalist in the Museum 

 of the Royal Dublin Society. Barrington in his under- 

 graduate years frequently visited the Museum, and was 

 charmed at the interest which More manifested in all his 

 inquiries. " I thought him," he afterwards remarked, 

 " the most delightful person I had ever met." The 

 tastes that the t^^-o had in common included both 

 botany and birds, and from this time onward Barrington 

 became a systematic explorer — so far as his leisure from 



