388 RECREATIONS OF A NATURALIST 



him a native of Tours and a nephew of St Martin. 

 About few other saints does so much uncertainty 

 prevail — even the year and day of his birth are 

 matters of dispute. 



The festival of St Patrick, as every one knows, is 

 observed throughout Ireland on March 17, but 

 whether that is the date of his birth, or the day of 

 his death, no one apparently has been able to decide. 

 If Samuel Lover may be credited with any knowledge 

 of the subject, the 17th of the month is more likely 

 to have been the date of the saint's death, for in his 

 humorous lines on " St Patrick's Birthday," he 

 wrote : — 



" On the eighth day of March it was, some people say. 

 That St Patrick at midnight he first saw the day ; 

 While others declare 'twas the ninth he was born. 

 And 'twas all a mistake between midnight and morn." 



But we are at present concerned, not so much 

 with the life of St Patrick and the date of his birth 

 or death, as with the natural history of the little 

 three-leaved plant with which his name is indis- 

 solubly connected. Here again authorities differ. 

 What the original Shamrock was is a question now 

 impossible to decide. We can only consider 

 probabilities and long usage. Turning to the cele- 

 brated Herbal of John Gerard, published in 1597, 

 we find his opinion to be that the true Shamrock is 

 the common Meadow Clover {Trifolutin pratense). 

 The equally celebrated English botanist, John Ray, 

 was of the same opinion. More than ten years, 

 however, before Gerard's work appeared, Stanihurst 

 in Holinshed's Chronicle (1586), wrote of " water- 



