a a a a a 
BOTANICAL EXCURSIONS IN DONEGAL. 127 
below gna Crithmum maritimum has a safe home. Here the 
scenery becomes very pleasing, and an effort to get a boat to Glas- 
heedy Island, a ‘canall rock with some sg a couple of miles 
to the west, failed on account of the sea bei ing up. Doagh Island 
would be the place for it, but it is not Sih the time, I feel sure. 
Along the base of these disintegrating sig, sometimes of a black 
basaltic nature, many land-plants occur. They are brought down 
by sheep and detritus from the seabed ‘above. At the base of one 
dolerite boss I found a nice lot of Raphanus maritimus, a rare plant, 
which has, however, two other Donegal geet assim in Inishowen. 
It and its cultivated field congener are not very far removed botani- 
cally. Allalong here Hupatorium is a erg sae common, and 
samphire, as usual, inaccessible, that within reach being picked. 
h 
plore the ‘‘ garrabrack”’ or oystercatcher, and the strand-curlew 
or whimbrel. Several grey crows are about too, a fine bird that 
has decreased in an extraordinary way in Donegal in my fa aga 
not in the pet oe to human agency, so si as I can make out. 
At .G r White Strand Bay, w aban the western 
extremity of : “‘illey running N.W. and §. Bie across to the north- 
east side of Malin Head, and S aeeat. Toleains that ne headland. 
A small river, the Keenagh, reaches its shore, and by its bank I 
met a well-known character of the district, fishing. Seeing me 
searching for plants, he supplied me with some folklore thereof. 
One —— interested me, that there was a rare spring plant 
there, on the pasture inside the strand in his farm, which was in- 
from it, and its flesh turn black in the course of an hour or two. 
I asked him to open the next at once, and try to find bits of the 
plant to be identified. 
I had intended to turn back here, but the coast ahead was too 
tempting to leave. After White Strand Bay there are clayey and 
fertile low steep banks above the sea. They were, however, so 
clean grazed, search was useless. At the first strand, a couple 
e 
or imm 
curred a nice patch of Mertensia maritima, and in a gully a little 
further on, just before the imposing surroundings of Breasty Bay 
under the extreme nose of Malin Head, Ligusticum occurs in some 
quantity. Beta maritima is very large here on the cliffs in inacces- 
sible spots, and even in this northernmost bit of Ireland, fenced in 
from grazing, it is quite possible a rare plant might be found. As 
it is, there is nothing more than an inch or two high. Of course 
ue desperately storm-swept nature of the place is partly the cause 
this. The adpressed growth that wasn’t commoner grasses, 
