THE ANNALS OF IRISH ZOOLOGY. 445 
Amidst all the cares and anxiety of his responsible position, 
this same Lord Deputy found leisure to kill an Ivish deer now 
and then. Writing from Coshawe, Co. Galway, to the Archbishop 
of Canterbury, in May, 1638, he says: *—“‘ To say the plain truth, 
whether we shall have a Government or no, and to the intent that 
I might be the better ‘in utrumque paratus,’ at this present I am 
playing the Robin Hood, and here in the country of mountains 
and woods hunting and chasing all the outlying Deer I can light 
of; but to confess truly, I met with a very shrewd rebuke the 
other day; for standing to get a shoot at a Buck I was so 
damnably bitten with midges [he was addressing an Archbishop, 
too!] as my face is all mezled over ever since, itches still as if it 
were mad; the marks they set will not go off again, I will warrant 
you, this week. I never felt or saw such in England; surely 
they are younger brothers to the moskitoes the Indies brag on 
so much!” 
From the titles of Dr. Gerard Boate’s works,t it might be 
expected that they would contain some account more or less 
important of Irish Vertebrata; but the inquiring zoologist who 
turns over their pages with such expectations will be certainly 
disappointed. It may be well to note here that these works 
relate chiefly to the physical aspect of the country, its hills, 
woods, bogs, lakes, and rivers; mines and minerals; natural 
curiosities and antiquities. 
We will quote but one passage to give an idea of the writer’s 
Style, and of the kind of information imparted. It occurs in the 
second of the books named (p. 192), amongst the natural 
curiosities, and relates to the Brent Goose, misnamed by Boate 
the “ Barnacle” :— | 
“ Barnacles,” he says, “are of the Wild Goose kind, and, like 
them, migrate from foreign countries to Ireland; they commonly 
come into Ireland in August, and leave it about March; their 
taste is very different, according to the places where they feed ; 
in most places they are so rank that no curious palate can dis- 
— 
* ‘Letters and Despatches’ (1638), vol. ii., p. 173. 
+ ‘Ireland’s Natural History,’ by Dr. Gerard Boate, 12mo, London, 
1652; and ‘A Natural History of Ireland,’ in three parts, by Dr. Gerard 
Boate, Thomas Molyneux, M.D., F.R.S., and others, 4to, Dublin, 1726. 
