Clare Island Survey. 



GENERAL INTRODUCTION AND NARRATIVE. 



By E. LLOYD PEAEGEB, 

 Plates I-IX. 



Read June 22, 1914. Published April 15, 1915. 



Islands and their animal and plant inhabitants have a special interest for 

 the naturalist. The study of their fauna and flora raises at once questions 

 of fundamental biological importance, especially with regard to the sources 

 from which their population has been derived, the means by which that 

 population reached its present habitat, and the effects of isolation upon 

 the flora and fauna in their island home. Thus it comes about that the 

 problem of insular populations has attracted the attention of the most 

 eminent biologists, many of whom have given close attention to this study — 

 for instance, Alphonse de Candolle, Edward Forbes, Charles Darwin, Alfred 

 Eussel Wallace, Sir J. D. Hooker. Thus, also, we find that in recent years 

 many notable works on the flora and fauna of islands have been published, 

 narrating, in most cases, the results of special expeditions sent out for the 

 purpose of studying the animals and plants of selected insular areas, and 

 inquiring into their relationships and origin. Places so far apart as Christmas 

 Island, 1 Anticosti, 2 Krakatau, 3 Funafuti, 4 the Faeroes, 3 and the subantarctic 

 islands of New Zealand, 6 have been monographed thus in recent years. 



Most of these islands are far removed from any other land, thus accentu- 

 ating the interest which centres round the question of the arrival of the 

 organisms which colonize them, and their subsequent behaviour. But even 

 in the case of islands which are separated by but a narrow barrier of sea 

 from adjoining areas, similar important problems arise. A study of the 

 dispersal of animals and plants across comparatively narrow stretches of 

 sea must undoubtedly throw much light on the problem of their passage 



1 A Monograph of Christmas Island (Indian Ocean) . London: British Museum, 1900. 



2 Joseph Schmitt : Monographie de 1' He Anticosti (Golf e Saint -Laurent). Paris, 1904. 



3 A. Ernst: The New Flora of the Volcanic Island of Krakatau. Cambridge, 1908. 



4 The Atoll of Funafuti, Ellice Group. Sydney : Australian Museum, 1896-7. 



5 Botany of the Faeroes, based upon Danish investigations. Copenhagen, &c, 1901-8. 



6 C. Chilton : The Subantarctic Islands of New Zealand, vols. i-ii. Wellington, N. Z., 1909. 



R.I. A. PKOC, VOL. XXXI. A 1 



