•30 Proceedings of the lioyal Irish Acadtmy. 



search for Irish material liad yielded so little rfsnlt that he had beeu 

 obliged to touch but very briefly on this braueh of the subject when 

 discussing the tropical drift of the Eui-opean shoies. Dr. Guppy's book 

 appeared early iu 1917. and his refereuc-es to Ireland in his chapter dealing 

 with "West Indian Drift on Eurojiean Shores" were so meagre as to 

 encourage me to pursue the inquiry, the fruit of which is embodied in the 

 present paper. While making use in many ways of Dr. Guppy's work, a 

 storehouse of erudition indispensable to all who study plant distribution, 

 I have endeavoureil to supplement his historical references so far as they 

 relate to the British Isles, and more especially to Ireland, and to show that his 

 e.\pectalion of a rich yield of tropical s€e<is from our Atlantic shores is 

 jus'ified. 



Before entering on a discussion of the Irish oceanic drift it may not be 

 altogether unnecessary to point out that the subject owes none of its iuterest 

 to any possibility of an increase in our island flora through the agency of 

 stranded tropical seeds. Climatic conditions are utterly opposed to any 

 such result, even granting, as we must, that drift seeds from the tropics are 

 from time to time cast up on our beaches in a gcrminable condition. But if 

 our Irish drift can claim none of the interest arising from such wide-spread 

 effects on plant distribution as are produced by the far more voluminous 

 drift of tropical seas, it has an iuterest of its own wliich it is hof>ed will 

 sufficiently aj'j<ear when we come to ojnsider its origin. 



For convenience of treatment these notes on Irish drift have been 

 roughly divided into three sections, dealing, respectively, with its history and 

 eonifnt-t, its origin, and its bolamieal ckaradtritiict, 



1. Tub lliSTOKY and Costexts of Tire Inisu Sk.\ Drift. 



In the " .\ ' : I Nova " of Mathias de I»bel, a I>atiii Flora or 



Herbal, public; i,:>ndon in 1570, we find what appears to be the fiiBt 



reference to the stranding of tropical seeds on the shores of the British Isles, 

 a reference which ante-dates by a century and a quarter the earliest usually 

 made in C' : with thi- It oc-curs in a chapter ou I'haseoli or 



Beans (pi'. >, in wh writer, having mentioned that he had 



obtained from ship-masters many different kinds brought from the New 

 World and from West Africa, proceeds in a passage which, translated, runs 

 thus: — 



"But we have received as a gift from that most distinguished lady. 

 Dame Catherine Killigrew, excellent in learning and of family illustrious in 



