1 88o] The Cliff of Mo her again . 275 



involving correspondence in all directions, to ascertain 

 what areas were now inhabited by squirrels, and to 

 account, by credible testimony, for their occurrence in 

 each. Every letter, every fact, was talked over with him. 

 It is no exaggeration to say he took as much interest in the 

 working-up of the subject as if it had been his own : this 

 indeed would be true of many far less useful contributions 

 to science than that which placed beyond doubt the fact 

 that the squirrel is not native in Ireland. The paper had 

 been scarcely read (at the Royal Dublin Society, May 19), 

 when he was again agitating about it, to hurry the printing. 



When able to bear movement, he went (June 3rd) on 

 sick leave to Killarney, and a wish to renew his acquaint- 

 ance with the Clare coast (doubtless stimulated by the dis- 

 covery of Neotinea intacta the year before at Ballyvaughan) 

 took him thence to Kilkee, and by short stages northwards 

 to Miltown-Malbay, Lisdoonvarna, and Galway. On the 

 1 8th of June he visited the Cliffs of Moher. It was twenty- 

 six years since " Hesperus " had before stood on the sum- 

 mit of that stupendous precipice, and been not easily 

 restrained from descending, with a cliffsman's rope round 

 his waist, to the homes of the Kittiwakes. The beautiful 

 birds were there, nesting in their thousands, as of old, in 

 the ledges of the great Cliff, and the invalid must have 

 viewed them with mingled feelings the old love unchanged, 

 but tempered with the consciousness of change in himself. 

 He found something, however, to say of that day's excur- 

 sion, for between Lahinch and the Cliffs he found a quantity 

 of the clover Trifolium maritimum a very unexpected dis- 

 covery in the west of Ireland, of a pi ant previously noticed 

 only " near glass-works at the North Lots, Dublin," and, 

 of course, with only the slenderest claims to count as in- 

 digenous. 



He returned to Dublin considerably stronger, and for 

 the next two months was busy at the Museum. Professor 

 Babington had proposed that they should meet in Wales 

 towards the end of August, and make a botanical expedi- 

 tion into Anglesea, to which he looked forward with sin- 

 gular pleasure, for the programme included visits to the 

 haunts of several of the rarest plants in Britain. 



T2 



