INTRODUCTION 



HISTORY.— The Phytological history of the district is of very recent 

 date, and the first botanical explorations were undertaken by strangers to 

 the locality. The eighteenth century saw the advent of Linnaeus, and in 

 response to the stimulus of his influence many botanists of eminence 

 appeared in England. The complicated nomenclature, and the absence 

 of any intelligible classification had, for long ages, limited the number of 

 botanists, and rendered their best efforts fruitless, but with the assistance 

 of the new system it became possible to reduce the existing chaos to 

 order. Eay's Synopsis, which had been the gi-eat authority on English 

 plants, was succeeded by the works of Martyn, Wilson, and HiU, aU 

 exponents of English botany. The Fhra Anglica of Hudson, however, 

 which followed close on the Species Plantarum, superseded all these 

 expositions of the British flora, and led the way in the introduction of 

 the Linnean system to this country. Withering, Lightfoot, Curtis, 

 Dickson, and Smith followed Hudson in rapid succession; local and 

 general Floras were issued, and England took the place, which it still 

 holds, as the best botanically investigated country in the world. 



Meanwhile Ireland was, as regards its botanical characteristics, scarcely 

 better than a Terra Incognita. To the Rev. Mr. Heaton, a Dublin 

 clergyman, we are indebted for our earliest information as to Irish 

 botany, Mr. Heaton' s notes of some plants observed by him having 

 appeared in Dr. How's Fhytologia Britannica, 1650. 



The next earliest contribution towards a knowledge of Irish plants 

 came from Dr. William Sherard, at one time British Consul at Smyrna, 

 a devoted botanist, and founder of the Chair of Botany at Oxford. Dr. 

 Sherard visited several parts of Ireland in 1694, and while partaking of 

 the hospitality of Sir Arthur Rawdon, at Moira, he explored the Moume 

 Mountains, and the shores of Lough Neagh. Sherard was cotemporary 

 with the later times of Ray, and a number of his Irish plants were pub- 

 lished by the latter in his second edition of the Synopsis Stirpium. 



Edward Lhwyd, an enthusiastic Welsh botanist, who is said to have 

 fallen a martyr to his zeal for botanical studies, made a tour in Ireland 

 early in the eighteenth century. His observations on what he saw of 

 Irish natiu-al history and antiquities were published in the Philosophical 

 Transactions for 1712, 



