x INTRODUCTION. 
being a very fair phonetic rendering of the Irish name for the 
Arbutus (Croun cahinye) still in use about the Cloonee Lakes. 
Kerry is also, no doubt, the “ part of Ireland ” indicated in 
Parkinson’s Theatrum Botanicum 1640, p. 1489, where he states 
that the Arbutus has been “of late dayes found in the West 
part of Ireland ’”’; while it is probable that both Sazifraga 
umbrosa and Euphorbia hiberna, two common Kerry plants 
recorded without definite locality in How’s Phytologia Britan- 
nica, 1650, as occurring in Ireland, should also be referred to 
this county. 
The first printed reference, however, to a plant as 
undoubtedly occurring in Kerry is to be found in Ray’s 
Synopsis, 2nd Ed. 1696. Here, dealing with the Scotch Fir, he 
refers to “‘ Kerry (where the Arbutus grows)”; but we have 
to wait another year before the first record of a Kerry species 
with a definite locality becomes available. This we owe to 
Dr. THOMAS MOLYNEUX (b. 1660—d. 1733), later Sir Thomas 
Molyneux Bart., State Physician in Ireland, who in the 
Philosophical Transactions, Vol. XIX., p. 510, 1697, records 
Saxifraga umbrosa as occurring on Mangerton, Kerry, where 
the plant is still abundant. Dr. Molyneux here also records 
the finding by an apothecary on one of the islands in Lough 
Lane, Killarney, of Juniperus Sabina, a name applied by early 
writers to J. nana ; this also is still to be found in its original 
station. 
Two years later, in 1699, EDWARD LHWYD, or Lloyd 
(b. 1670-d. 1709), Keeper of the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, 
made his tour in Ireland to find his botanical curiosity frustra- 
ted by the Kerry “ Tories,” asalready noted. Inspite of their 
embarrassing attentions he appears to have pushed his investi- 
gations as far as Brandon mountain at the extreme western 
end of the Dingle peninsula. The results of this tour were not 
published until 1712, three years after his early death, when his 
paper “ Some further Observations relating to the Antiquities 
and Natural History of Ireland ” appeared in the Philosophical 
Transactions, Vol. XXVII., p. 524. This contains the first 
county records for Sawifraga stellaris, Alchemilla alpina, 
Saussurea alpina and Veronica montana. For these plants no 
more definite locality is given than “on the mountains of 
Keri,” but as the Alchemilla is found in the county only on 
Brandon, it may safely be assumed that this species at least 
was gathered there by Lhwyd. The next record appears 
fourteen years later in the Appendix to Threlkeld’s Synopsis, 
1726, where Dr. Molyneux, to whom we already owe Sazifraga 
umbrosa and Juniperus nana records Pyrus [rupicola} as occur- 
