52 FAMILIAR TREES 



Muckross Abbey in the fifteenth. The late Professor 

 Babington, who afterwards secured recognition as a 

 critical authority on such questions, visited Killarney 

 in 1835 and came to the" conclusion that the Arbutus 

 was indigenous. Similarly, Mr. Edward Step, writing 

 in 1904, speaks of finding it "in the woods at 

 Woodstock, CO. Kilkenny, in a situation where it 

 seemed unlikely such a tree would be planted." 

 Considering, however, the extent to which this 

 tree has established itself at Clifton, that the 

 climate of Kerry certainly suits it, that its fruit 

 is greedily eaten by many birds, and its seed so 

 dispersed, and that ex hypothesi it may have been 

 introduced four or even eleven centuries ago, we 

 feel bound to admit that it is impossible to hold 

 the introduction theory to be untenable. If, oii 

 the other hand, we adopt the general view of Con- 

 tinental botanists, and attribute its existence in 

 Ireland to natural causes, favoured by the mild 

 infiuence of the Gulf Stream, the Arbutus affords 

 an interesting illustration of one of the most far- 

 reaching speculations of modem geography, that put 

 forward by Hewett Watson in 1832 and independently 

 by Edward Forbes in the year following. 



If we look at a map showing the 100-fathom line 

 around the submerged plateau upon which the 

 British Isles stand, we shall see that this sounding 

 sweeps from the north-west coast of the Asturian 

 provinces across the Bay of Biscay, and then turns, 

 considerably to the west of Brittany, towards the 

 coast of Kerry. If, then, in a former age, when the 

 whole of north-western Europe stood more than 600 



