PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. 



The Gaelic Names of Plants, reprinted from a series of articles 

 in the ' Scottish Naturalist,' which have appeared during the last 

 four years, are published at the request of many who wish to have 

 them in a more convenient form. There might, perhaps, be 

 grounds for hesitation in obtruding on the public a work of this 

 description, which can only be of use to comparatively few ; but 

 the fact that no book exists containing a complete catalogue of 

 Gaelic names of plants is at least some excuse for their publication 

 in this separate form. Moreover, it seemed to many able botanists 

 that, both for scientific and philological reasons, it would be very 

 desirable that an attempt should be made to collect such names as 

 are still used in the spoken Gaelic of Scotland and Ireland, before 

 it became too late by the gradual disappearance of the language. 

 Accordingly the author undertook this task at the request of the 

 Editor of the 'Scottish Naturalist,' Dr Buchanan Whyte, F.L.S. 

 If the difficulties of its accomplishment had been foreseen, he 

 would have hesitated to make the attempt; as it is, nearly ten 

 years of his life have been occupied in searching through vocabu- 

 laries, reading Irish and Scottish Gaelic, and generally trying to 

 bring into order the confusion to which these names have 

 been reduced, partly by the carelessness of the compilers of 

 Dictionaries, and frequently by their botanical ignorance. To 

 accomplish this, numerous journeys had to be undertaken among 

 the Gaelic-speaking populations, in order, if possible, to settle dis- 

 puted names, to fix the plant to which the name was applied, and 

 to collect others previously unrecorded. 



In studying the Gaelic nomenclature of plants, it soon became 

 evident that no collection would be of any value unless the Irish- 

 Gaelic names were incorporated. Indeed when the lists supplied 

 by Alexander Macdonald (Mac-Mhaighster-Alastair), published in 



