1874J Fruitless Search for Erica ciliaris. 249 



writes another letter on the subject, going rather more 

 fully into details : 



DUBLIN, February 2jrd, 1878. 



DEAR BABINGTON, I was very glad to see your handwriting, as it 

 seems a long time since we exchanged letters. I still believe that 

 there must have been some mistake made in labelling the specimens in 

 Edinburgh, and that probably only E. mackaii was gathered. At 

 any rate, neither you, nor Moore, nor I, nor Balfour himself, can find 

 E. ciliaris. 



Mr. Bergin has been dead for many years, and I once questioned 

 his widow about the heath. She said that M'Calla took Mr. Bergin to 

 show him (one filant, I think she seemed to say) growing on a stream 

 close to or in the very village of Roundstone itself. 



Now, the current tradition was that Bergin alighted from a car 

 while driving near Craigga-more, and stumbled upon Erica ciliaris 

 close to the road itself, having stepped across a bank or wall. This 

 was in 1846, and as I think M'Calla was with him, I always thought he 

 had perhaps played a trick upon Bergin. 



At any rate the plant at Roundstone looks very suspicious. 



Several specimens were sent to Mackay, and I never doubted that 

 the alleged locality was close to Craigga-more hill, and I thought a 

 little way from thence westward to Clifden. . . . 



Now, when we drove with Balfour searching for E. ciliaris, he got 

 down to try the very place I had fixed upon, and another not far from 

 it, both of these being much nearer to Craigga-more than to the inlet 

 of salt-water close to Clifden, which he chose at last, and which does 

 not seem at all a likely spot, nor did it strike me then as having been 

 much altered. In fact, I felt quite sure it was the wrong spot, and on 

 the first day Balfour did not recognize* this place at all. 



Still, it would be very strange if a trick was played in 1846, and 

 afterwards a wholesale mislabelling took place with the same plant. 

 We must look again this autumn, and I think it would be well to bring 

 the history of the lost plant before the Association, and set some half- 

 dozen good botanists to look after it. The kind of place is a sort of 

 bank of peat, rising a little above the surrounding flat bog. You will 

 easily imagine what sort of information might be elicited by leading 

 questions put to the present occupier of the ground ! 



I believe I have some specimens left of the E. mackaiana from near 

 Carna. 



After his sixth and last visit to Roundstone he had still 

 the same report to make. "I have never been able to 

 find a trace of Erica ciliaris/' he writes on February igth, 



* In another letter he says, perhaps with stricter accuracy, "did not at all 

 seem inclined to adopt it as the right spot, but we kept searching all the way 

 back towards Craigga-more." 



