1864] Fifth Visit to Ireland. \ 69. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 



FIFTH VISIT TO IRELAND. 



[1864.] 



AND now, once again, he was to try the effect as a health 

 restorative of Irish air. Towards the end of February, 

 1864, at the invitation of their kind friends in the West, 

 his sister and he crossed over to Ireland, making his fifth 

 visit to that country and to Castle Taylor. The complete- 

 ness of the change was indescribably refreshing to him. 

 It seemed as if the very sight of that vivid limestone 

 flora, which, as he had long before said in his journal, 

 seemed to smile as a friend wherever 'he met it, truly 

 bespoke the kindliness of the climate to one who loved it 

 so well. Even now, though it was only February, he 

 found, as his scrap of a journal notes, already " one flower 

 of Gentiana verna," as it were by way of a welcome. 



All through March and part of April they stayed at 

 Castle Taylor. " I rejoice to tell you that I am better in 

 health now than I have been for a long time," he writes to 

 Mr. Newton (March 3ist). "We have killed lots of Wood- 

 cock, and I have had shot at twelve Wild Swans here " 

 (23rd). On the 24th the Mediterranean Heath, ever one 

 of his favourite Irish plants, was " in beautiful (early) 

 flower"; and the advance of Sesleria caerulea from "spikes 

 one inch long," on March i3th, till it was seen "with 

 anthers exserted " on the 8th April, was noticed with 

 special interest among the symptoms of the spring. 



But while marking the progress of this and similar 

 limestone-loving species, in a certain " large rocky pasture 

 field west of the Nut- Wood/' where in former summers they 

 remembered hunting the remarkable moth Zygsena minos, 

 they now noticed something which turned out to be even 

 more remarkable an inconspicuous but evidently un- 

 familiar orchidaceous plant. It was not as yet sufficiently 



