1882] Correspondence with Mr. R. J. Ussher. 297 



sincerely hope that you will go on with the Birds and Fishes of your 

 own county, and I need scarcely say how glad I should be if I could 

 be of the least use in helping you to identify specimens. I hope, now 

 that I am appointed Curator, to make Irish Natural History a chief 

 object in this Museum ; and I should rejoice to find many more like 

 yourself, diligent field-workers at the subject. 



We have not neglected the Light-houses. We have schedules 

 issued since August through the Board of Irish Lights. The Academy 

 have given grants for Botany and Dredging, and Cave-exploration. 

 Another of my friends* has just applied to be authorized to work out 

 the Entomology of Ulster. You are working in the South, and I hope 

 will soon have something to print. So I believe it will be best to leave 

 each individual to choose his own line, and make his own observations 

 in the district with which he is most familiar. Is not this the surest as 

 it seems the easiest way ? 



A feeling as though his work for Irish Natural History 

 was still only beginning is as discernible here as in the 

 sanguine tone of his letters to Mr. Newton ; but hopefully 

 as the new year opened, it was quickly overcast. On 

 Thursday, January I2th, 1882, he left Glasnevin, where he 

 had lived since the time of first settling in Dublin, to take 

 up his abode in Leinster-road, Rathmines. On Friday, 

 the 1 3th, he was laid up in bed. This was only a premo- 

 nitory attack, and was repeated on the 2oth. His com- 

 plaint returned in full violence on the nth of February, his 

 father's 85th birthday. Ten days in bed, four on a sofa, a 

 fortnight's convalescence indoors, and then a fresh out- 

 break almost immediately after his return to the Museum 

 kept him an almost continual sufferer to the end of April, 

 when a visit on sick leave to Malvern partly restored him. 

 He returned to Dublin on the i3th of May. In a letter to 

 Mr. Griffith (June i5th) he writes: "I am sorry to say that 

 I have been in very poor health ever since the early spring, 

 when I had again an abscess in my leg which laid me up 

 for a long time, and I cannot now do more than quite a 

 short walk." This was written only four days before 

 another attack prostrated him afresh. At the beginning 

 of August he went for medical advice to London, returned 

 to Dublin on the i2th, and for the rest of the year was 

 spared renewals of actual illness, but it was now easily seen 



* Mr. W. F. de V.Kane. 



