120 Scientific Proceedings, Roijal Dublin Society. 



fresli. I now reached the narrow bank of sand which separates 

 Lady's Island Lake from the sea, a lake abounding m ducks, 

 black-headed gulls, and other wild-fowl. This lake has no outlet, 

 and as it is of considerable size, about ten miles in circumference, 

 and receives much drainage and many small streams, it causes 

 occasionally most injurious floods. When these become past en- 

 durance, the inhabitants of the country round assemble, and in 

 a few days succeed in cutting a channel through the sand to the 

 " big sea." This is soon again filled up : when I was there it had 

 not been open for two years, and the flood was then considerable. 

 The plants of this lake betray its brackish tendency. Such un- 

 usual conditions were not to be passed over, and I determined to 

 make a complete circuit of the lake. On the bar at the eastern side 

 of the lake on the sea-margin I found Biotis maritima, the sea cotton- 

 weed, one of the rarest Irish plants, very beautiful with its snow- 

 white woolly foliage, and conspicuous at a considerable distance. 

 It grows on the barest sandy shores with scattered plants of bent, 

 sea bindweed, and sea spurge. A barren gap occurs, the j)art where 

 the channel is at times cut through, and then in a few hundred 

 yards Diotis occurs again abundantly on the margin of the lake at 

 its seaward end, and along the coast for about a mile to the bar of 

 Tacumshin Lake, another brackish inlet. This plant is found at 

 one place on the Kerry coast, and another in Waterford, Bally- 

 heigh, and Tramore respectively. In England, according to Watson, 

 it is now nearly extinct on the south-western shores. It was first 

 recorded from the present site by Mr. John Waddy, and has since, 

 I believe, been more accurately traced by Mr. Kinahan. On the 

 coast below Lady's Island Lake I also gathered Raphanus maritimus. 

 On the eastern margin of the lake the following plants were noticed 

 in the order mentioned : — (Enantlie lachenalii, Potmnogeton pectina- 

 tus, Zannichetlia palustris, Ranunculus haudotii, Bidens cernua, Rumex 

 hydrolapathum, Lycopus &uro2omus, Carex ovalis, C. hirta, C. extensa, 

 and other commoner sedges and marsh species, to about the middle 

 of the eastward shores of the lake, half a mile from a village. 

 Hero I discovered Rumex maritimus sparingly, but afterwards plen- 

 tiful, especially on the northern shore abreast of Lady's Island. 

 This is an important new habitat. R. maritimus grows abundantly 

 at a long-known station, that of Garristown bog in Dublin, where 

 I observed it immediately after the tour I am now describing. 



