THE ZOOLOGIST. 



THIRD SERIES. 



Vol. XIV.] OCTOBER, 189 0. [No. 166. 



ON THE COAST OF CONNAUGHT. 

 By R. J. Usshee. 



By the kindness of my friend the Rev. W. S. Green, Inspector 

 of Irish Fisheries, I had the advantage of accompanying him on 

 part of his cruise, during the first half of June last, from Galway 

 to the Arran Islands, the bays of southern Connemara, Inishbofin, 

 and Belmullet on Blacksod Bay. I thence travelled through 

 Mayo to Ballina. I thus had a rare opportunity of noting, in 

 the breeding season, the birds frequenting some of our remotest 

 coasts and islands. 



We were three days at Inishmore, the largest of the Arran 

 Islands, which is about nine miles long, presenting along its 

 seaward side a line of overhanging cliffs that rise in the neigh- 

 bourhood of the pre-historic fortress of Dun Angus to three 

 hundred feet. The entire island is of limestone, and the surface 

 is usually composed of bare tracts of this rock, more or less 

 smooth, but furrowed everywhere by parallel crevices in which 

 the maiden-hair and other ferns grow luxuriantly. Except a few 

 trees about two gentlemen's houses, there are none on the island, 

 and, unlike the opposite coast of Connemara, there is no peat. 

 From the central heights the island slopes gently to its north- 

 east shore, near which the population live, cultivating potatoes 

 in the thin layer of soil. Wherever I went through the island 

 the cry of the Chough or its graceful form was never long absent ; 

 but I found that its breeding haunts were not, as usual on my 

 own coast, recesses over caves open to the sea ; for in Arran the 



ZOOLOGIST. — OCTOBER, 1890. 2 E 



