PREFACE. 



PoE many years before his death, in the spring of 1895, the publi- 

 cation of a new edition of Cylele Hibernioa was kept steadily in view 

 by the surviving editor of the first edition, our valued friend, Alex- 

 ander Goodman More. So early as 1885, the Eoyal Irish Academy 

 had associated itseK with the undertaking by granting him a sum of 

 fifty pounds for the preparation of a report on the Distribution of 

 Plants in Ireland, it being understood that this report should form 

 the groundwork of the new edition. When two years later he was 

 obliged by severe and long continued illness to resign the curatorship 

 of the Dublin Natural History Museum, it was hoped by all inte-- 

 rested in Irish botany that health and strength might be granted 

 him to finish the onerous work he had taken in hand. But as time 

 passed, it became more and more perceptible that his failing bodily 

 powers were unequal to the task. The intervals of comparatively 

 good health which he enjoyed in his retirement enabled him, indeed, 

 to bring together a large mass of material, published and unpublished, 

 and to decide many doubtful points which his unrivalled judgment 

 peculiarly fitted him for dealing with. This material, with his 

 annotations, was embodied in an interleaved copy of the first edition, 

 to be presented in due course to the Eoyal Irish Academy and to 

 serve as the report which he had been commissioned by that body to 

 prepare. But beyond this point his flagging energies failed to carry 

 him ; and when he finally passed away from us, the work remained 

 sadly incomplete. He had taken steps, however, to ensure that his 

 undertaking should not die with him. He had set apart private 

 funds to meet the expenses of publication, and left among his papers 



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