1872] Achill and Inishkea. 239 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 



ACHILL AND INISHKEA. 



(1872-1873.) 



His long-interrupted " Supplement to the Flora Vectensis " 

 had at last been completed and published in the Journal 

 of Botany in 1871; and the "First Supplement to the 

 Cybele Hibernica" quickly followed (June, 1872). He 

 now looked forward to a fresh renewal of bird-work, and 

 among his projects for the summer of 1872, he tells Mr. 

 Harvie-Brown, was a search for the Roseate Tern. " The 

 bird-stuffers tell me (he writes) that the bird has become 

 much scarcer than it used to be." The bird-stuffers 

 were indeed but too accurate, and the beautiful Roseate 

 Tern, whatever it may have been in 1872, is now com- 

 puted a " lost Irish bird." But he did not accomplish 

 this quest, which would have taken him to islands of the 

 eastern coast. Again he went to the West, to explore 

 the shores of Mayo north of Clew Bay. He now paid his 

 first vist to Achill, where he took some botanical expedi- 

 tions with Mr. W. Pike, was shown a few plants of his 

 favourite Mediterranean Heath, and shot a seal ; and on 

 Friday, Aug. 23rd, touched at the small island of Inishkea, 

 afterwards strangely connected with his story. In Sep- 

 tember, with his sister and a few friends, he enjoyed a 

 tour in Switzerland, visited Berne, Zurich, Chur, Ander- 

 matt, the Eggischorn, Lausanne, and Geneva, and hunted 

 butterflies, as of old, in the Alpine forests; and in the 

 winter he settled down again to ornithology. 



He had now been nine years a resident in Ireland, and 

 had every reason to congratulate himself on the compara- 

 tively excellent health he had enjoyed during that period. 

 The tenth year was distinguished by an unfortunate occur- 

 rence, from the effects of which, it is believed, he never 

 recovered; and a touch of Fate's "irony" is not lacking 



