[ 547 ] 



SKETCHES OF IRISH NATURAL HISTORY. 



WRITTEN FOR " GUY'S PICTORIAL GUIDE TO THE SOUTH OF IRELAND." 



I. MAMMALS. 



IN consequence of Ireland having been separated from Great 

 Britain before England was itself cut off from the Continent, both 

 mammals and reptiles are much fewer than might have been expected. 

 This is not owing to the humidity of the climate only. The pipistrelle 

 and the long-eared bat are common. The lesser horse-shoe bat has 

 been found in numbers in the counties of Kerry, Clare, and Galway. 

 The reddish-grey bat has been captured in Cork, and the whiskered bat 

 at Feakle in Clare, the only Irish locality. The hedge-hog, lesser 

 shrew, badger, otter, stoat, and fox are all common. The pine-marten, 

 though occasionally found, has become very rare. Two species of seal 

 (Phoca vitulina and Halichoerus gryfihus] frequent our coasts. The 

 squirrel, first introduced in Wicklow, is spreading from Leinster into 

 the north of Munster. The " Irish hare," so-called, is now well known 

 to be identical with the mountain or "blue" hare of Scotland. The 

 Irish hare changes, more or less, to white in severe winters. So 

 does the stoat in Ireland, but very rarely, and is hardly ever found pure 

 white. On the other hand, the Irish hare changes in colour much 

 more rapidly, and, on high mountain ground, becomes pretty generally 

 white or whitish in severe winters, when the ground is covered with 

 snow. The red colour of the bogs has, in Ireland, no doubt given a 

 protective tint to the fur, while in Scotland the "blue" or greyish 

 colour is, in the same way, connected with the greyer tint of the granite 

 mountains. Both hare and stoat may have immigrated from Scotland 

 rather than England, or from England while it had an Arctic climate. 

 The long-tailed field-mouse frequents our fields and gardens, and the 

 common mouse and brown rat are ubiquitous. The Irish black rat 

 (Mus hibernicus] is now generally admitted to be, as was long ago 

 pointed out by Blasius, Murray, and Lord Clermont, only a variety of 

 the brown rat. The rabbit is not native, but is now found everywhere, 

 even among the sea-cliffs. The only remaining refuge of the red deer 

 is among the wooded mountains round the Lakes of Killarney. It was 

 hunted on the mountains of Tipperary and Waterford in the last 

 century, and the abundance of its remains in the refuse -heaps of raths 

 shows how common it once was in Munster. The remains of the Irish 

 elk have been dug up numerously from beneath peat -bogs in the south 



2 N 2 



