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Notes of a Botanical Ramble in Connemara and Arran. 

 By Leslie Ogilby, Esq.* 



You have urged me to give some account of my late excursion to 

 Connemara and Arran. You are pleased to think it would be botani- 

 cally interesting, and even acceptable to the editor of the ' Phytolo- 

 gist.' In responding to your wish, it is not without the greatest diffi- 

 dence, both as to my ability for the attempt, but also as to the quality 

 of the material I have to communicate. - 



I shall commence my ramble from the historically interesting town 

 of Galvvay. Mounted on a comfortable Bianconi car, I left the town 

 on the 15th of August, about 10 o'clock in the morning. The car 

 runs to Clifden, on the western coast, at which place it arrives at 7 

 in the evening. The scenery between Galvvay and Oughterard is very 

 pleasing : you have, for nearly the whole way, views of the great 

 Lough or Lake Corrib, and along the road there appears a good deal 

 of young plantation, an evidence of means, taste, and consequent im- 

 provement. The very neat little town of Oughterard is the first place 

 of any note you come to ; the situation is very pleasing, and seems to 

 occupy, as it were, the boundary between the primitive mountains of 

 Connemara and the secondary range forming the lowlands. A very 

 handsome river runs through part of the town, opposite OTlaherty's 

 Hotel, and a branch of Lough Corrib approaches it on the eastern 

 side. In this immense sheet of water are many islands. The whole 

 neighbourhood, indeed, affords a field for the general naturalist. In 

 the rivers the Mya Margaritifera abounds ; and I learned fi-om two 

 eminent conchologists whom I met at Roundstone, that some good 

 pearls are occasionally offered for sale in the town. I have often 

 heard the late talented Mr. James White, for so many years under- 

 gardener at Glasnevin, speak of this place. He accompanied the 

 then Professor of Botany, Dr. Wade, in his botanic journey to Con- 

 nemara, some thirty or forty years ago, and they made Oughterard a 

 kind of head-quarters. On one of the islands of Lough Corrib I per- 

 fectly recollect Mr. White informing me he found Potentilla fruticosa, 

 and on a visit he made to the large island of Boffin, off the western 

 coast, he found that beautiful variety (if such it be) of Convolvulus 

 sepium, with the corolla pink coloured, so very like Convolvulus Sol- 

 danella. He long cherished this plant in the Glasnevin Garden as a 



* Addressed to D. Moore, Esq., of the Dublin Glasnevin Garden, by whom it is 

 communicated. 



Vol. II. 2 u 



