170 BOTANICAL NOTES ON IRELAND. 
with its strawberry-like fruit; in the woods about Ross Castle 
Paris quadrifolia, and in the same locality Betonica officinalis 
can be obtained. On the ruins of Mucruss Abbey Orobanche 
minor is found; but its peculiar charm is the ever-prized fern, 
Trichomanes brevisetum. It may not be generally known that 
this lovely plant will soon have ceased to exist in this its first- 
discovered haunt, as the guides sell roots of it for a high price. 
Our fourth province, Connaught, offers to the admirer of 
nature the wild grandeur of a district in the County Galway, 
known as Connemara, or the Irish Highlands. The traveller 
cannot fail to be pleased with the fine outline of the twelve Bens 
of Benabeola, which seem to environ the town of Clifden, and 
which Inglis has pronounced to be worthy of Switzerland; nor 
less so when he enters the Pass of Kylemore, with this chain on | 
the right, and a lake three miles in extent at their base, with 
the Gurrane Mountains on the left, some of which for more 
than two miles through the pass are nearly clothed to the 
summit with a natural wood of Oak and Holly, interspersed 
with tremendous rocks, over which numerous torrents turn and 
twist their foamy path. My short botanical research here was 
rewarded by Savifraga umbrosa, London Pride; Pinguicula 
lusitanica, or Pale Butterwort ; Pinguicula vulgaris, Asplenium 
Filix-feemina, Cistopteris fragilis, and very fine specimens of 
Blechnum boreale and Osmunda regalis, a fern which fringes the 
bank of many a stream in Connemara. From Kylemore it is 
easy to reach the upper portion of Killery Harbour, a deep 
winding inlet of the ocean which separates the mountain-range 
of Gurrane from that of Mulrea. Lovely is the view from the 
head of the Killeries: the fine harbour, the isles beyond just 
visible, the lofty height of the mountains, with their deep gorges, 
and having their base washed by this fiord of the Atlantic, ven- 
turing to lock itself so far inland as to wear off from the appear- 
ance of a lake to that of a river. Near this locality I saw a 
small lake literally covered with the splendid flowers of Nym- 
phea alba, or white Water-lly ; I also had remarked it in great 
profusion between Recess Hotel and Ballinahinch; near the 
latter place, in boggy ground, I got Drosera anglica, or Great 
Sundew, and Menziesia polifolia, the beautiful Irish Heath, in 
abundance. I was much disappointed that time did not permit 
me when at Roundstone to gather Erica mediterranea, which is 
