178 TITMOUSE IRELAND. 



flesh ; for it frequently picks bones on dunghills ; it is a vast 

 admirer of suet, and haunts butchers' shops. When a boy, I 

 have known twenty in a morning caught with snap mouse- 

 traps, baited with tallow or suet. It will also pick holes in 

 apples left on the ground, and be well entertained with the 

 seeds on the head of a sunflower. The blue, marsh, and great 

 titmice will, in very severe weather, carry away barley and 

 oat straws from the sides of ricks. 



How the wheatear and whin-chat support themselves in 

 winter, cannot be so easily ascertained, since they spend their 

 time on wild heaths and warrens ; the former especially, 

 where there are stone quarries : most probable it is, that their 

 maintenance arises from the aurelise of the lepidoptera ordo, 

 which furnish them with a plentiful table in the wilderness. 



LETTER LXIV. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQ. 



SELBORNE, March 9, 1775. 



DEAR SIR, Some future faunist, a man of fortune, will, I 

 hope, extend his visits to the kingdom of Ireland ; a new field, 

 and a country little known to the naturalist.* He will not, it 

 is to be wished, undertake that tour unaccompanied by a 

 botanist, because the mountains have scarcely been sufficiently 

 examined ; and the southerly counties of so mild an island may 

 possibly afford some plants little to be expected within the 

 British dominions.-)- A person of a thinking turn of mind will 

 draw many just remarks from the modern improvements of that 



* Among the newly described species indigenous to these kingdoms, 

 is Sabine's snipe, scolopax Sabini, which was discovered in Ireland. It has 

 now been identified as a native of that country. ED. 



j- In Cunnemara, a wild district of Gaiway, Ireland, Mr Mackay of 

 Dublin discovered the erica Mediterranean growing on a declivity, by a 

 stream, in boggy ground, at the foot of Urrisbeg mountain, occupying a 

 space of about hall a mile ; and also the Menziesia polifolio. These two 

 plants had not before been found in Britain or Ireland, being only known 

 to the botanist as indigenous to the south of Europe; and Mr Lees dis- 

 covered the iris tuberosa near Cork. The eriocaulon septangular^ 

 abounds in all the small lakes of Cunnemara. The rare aralis ciliata, 

 the Menziesia polifolio, the sascifraya umbro&a, so well known as London 

 pride, are also reckoned among its natives; the aluoria ciliata has been 

 found on Ben Bulbew, and the rosa Hibernica in the vicinity of Belfast. 

 The arbutus unedo, or snowberry tree, contributes much to the beauty 

 of Killarney, where the elegant pinguicala grandiflora is also found, and 

 to be met with nowhere else. ED. 



