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[Proc. B.N.F.C: 



in the world for academic scientific research. To this is due the 

 fact that Irish workers have been enabled in recent years to carry 

 out such a number of carefully conducted surveys in the less 

 known corners of the country, and are at present at work at the 

 most complete survey of an island area that has ever been 

 attempted anywhere. I refer to the survey of Clare Island, and 

 the reports on some sections of the work will likely be presented 

 to the Royal Irish Academy this Winter, though some groups will 

 not be quite finished till next Autumn. Eight or nine members 

 of this Club are taking an active part in this survey, and your old 

 secretary, Mr. Praeger, is the convener of the working parties. 

 Zoologists and Botanists making a special study of distribution 

 now recognise that island faunas and floras — especially large 

 islands like Ireland that have been long detached from Con- 

 tinental areas — are especially useful, in that they are not so 

 subject to keen competition as on the continent itself. On 

 the island area the primitive characters last much longer, and 

 nowhere in recent years has this fact given rise to more discussion 

 than in connection with certain elements of the Irish Fauna. 

 Points have arisen from time to time over specimens sent to 

 specialists to report on, as to whether these were species not hitherto 

 described or merely races differing in a more or less marked 

 way from those of Great Britain and the Continent. A number 

 of groups are under revision in Ireland at the present time in 

 connection with up-to-date Geographical lists. In addition to many 

 published in recent years by the Royal Irish Academy, in the 

 Irish Naturalist, or in our own Proceedings, Mr. Balfour Browne 

 has in hands a list of the Water-Beetles ; Mr. Foster, the Wood- 

 lice ; Mr. Orr, the Wasps and Wild Bees ; and Mr. Stelfox, a 

 census of the Land and Freshwater Mollusca. It is from lists 

 such as these that specialists like Darwin or Wallace, or, in our 

 country, Scharff or Carpenter get the detailed information 

 necessary for the preparation of such maps of distribution as I 

 shall show you to-night. It is, too, in such work steadily and 



