ANDREWS — ON SOME IRISH SAXIFRAGES. 85 



Among the forms which I now exhibit is a very fine species of geum, 

 found in the Great Blasket Island, coast of Kerry, at the extreme 

 western point of that island, exposed to the western gales and sprays 

 of the Atlantic. The drawing of the plant was taken of a specimen 

 in full flower by my lamented friend, the late George V. Du Noyer, 

 whose talents as a practical geologist, and as an artist of celebrity in 

 pourtraying most accurately and vividly all objects of natural history, 

 have made his loss to us great. This beautiful saxifrage is remarkable 

 in having a series of glands of a rich rose colour, surrounding the base 

 of the ovary, which give a remarkable appearance to its inflorescence. 

 It seems a singular approach to Parnassiaa and Crassulasiae, and still 

 more so by the seedlings maintaining the character of the original plant, 

 producing the metamorphic glands of the parent. Mr. A. G. More has 

 noticed at the entrance of Dingle harbour the remarkably large and 

 strong growth of forms of geum exposed to the sprays of the sea. 



Another form I wish to submit, in order that botanists in their 

 excursions in this country may recognise it by its form of leaves. It 

 has already been described by the late Dr. Harvey, and although so 

 remarkable from other forms of umbrosa in the foliage, yet in that 

 variable family no specific separation would be formed on such charac- 

 ters. It is in the floral organs that the distinction is maintainable, and 

 which are so remarkable that it would puzzle botanists to assert with 

 certainty what hybridisation could have produced such characteristics 

 of the ovary, which cause its affinity to plants whose periods of flower- 

 ing and perfecting their seeds are at an early and late periods of the 

 season. This, as Mr. C. Watson expresses, in his last edition of the 

 "Cybele Britannica," is a botanical puzzle, and one that renders it 

 very difficult to withdraw from its botanical distinction. 



I may refer to some remarkable specimens of Saxifraga stellaris 

 obtained on moist rocks in one of those wild mountain retreats near 

 Loc Coomeathcun, county of Kerry. It appears very distinct from the 

 more hirsute and more compact forms met on the Connor Cliffs, opposite 

 the Brandon range. The flowering stems are of far more elongated 

 growth, and, what is remarkable, many produce in the axils of the 

 bracts foliaceous buds. 



These characteristics ally it with S. leucantkemifolia of the Pyrenees, 

 and decidedly to S. foliolosa of Robert Brown, described in Torrey and 

 Gray's American Flora. On referring to notices already given of these 

 forms of saxifrages, I was not surprised to find, in the eleventh volume 

 of the " Annals of Natural History," an article by John Ball, Esq., a 

 well-known European botanist, that he had gathered in the Otzal in 

 the Tyrol the plant described as S. leucantkemifolia (Lap) by Eeichen- 

 bach and other German botanists, and he was quite of the opinion of 

 Bertoline that it is only a state of S. stellaris. Mr. Ball gives its 

 characteristics, showing how nearly or identical it is with some of the 

 forms of S. stellaris. He mentions a variety of S. stellaris found by 

 him in Curslieve, in Mayo, which is much more different from the 

 ordinary form. It is larger, hairy, and somewhat viscose, the panicle 



