4 



The Rev. Dr. Hincks on the Flora of Ireland. 



tany were previous to Mr. Mackay's settlement in Ireland, 

 and were in a great degree a cause of that settlement, to whom 

 I shall afterwards refer. I am willing to take it in that exten- 

 sive sense, and trust I shall make it appear that Mr. Mackay 

 found much done by them before he saw Ireland. But does 

 not Mr. Mackay in his preface tell us of Molyneux's cata- 

 logue of rare plants appended to Threlkeld ? and previously 

 of Heaton, and Llhwyd and Sherard ? Are not some of our 

 rarest plants recorded by Ray ? Does not he tell us of Smith's 

 Cork and Kerry ? of Wade's Flora Dublinensis and Plantae 

 Rariores ? Does he not refer to a catalogue of the plants of the 

 county Cork by Jas. Drummond ? These are mentioned by 

 Mr. Mackay, but considered by his reviewer as absolutely 

 nothing. 



Having thus stated the charge brought, that the literary 

 men of Ireland had been peculiarly negligent of her botanical 

 treasures, I shall endeavour to show that it is in great mea- 

 sure not well-founded. It proceeds on the supposition that 

 because a local Flora had not been published, therefore " the 

 botany of Ireland was as much unknown as that of an island 

 in the Pacific." Now we have seen that works were published 

 early in the 18th century, and that references are made to bo- 

 tanists in the 17th century : may we not then look to the com- 

 parative state of botany elsewhere ? It is well known that for 

 a long period this science was cultivated merely as (( the hum- 

 ble but engaging handmaid of surgery and medicine. 99 All 

 the catalogues had a reference to this, except those of timber 

 trees and articles of food. It was not till the latter end of the 

 17th century, that botany began to make progress as a sci- 

 ence, and notwithstanding the valuable labours of Ray and 

 Tournefort, it was not till the establishment of the Linnaean 

 System, about the middle of the 18th century, that there was 

 any work " to enable a botanist by short determinate charac- 

 ters to discover the name of an unknown plant." It is use- 

 less then to lament that there was no Irish work of this kind, 

 when none existed anywhere. Without urging our ignorance 

 of what may be concealed in Irish MSS ; without alleging 

 the change that had so recently taken place in Ireland by the 

 cutting down of woods and the formation of bogs ; without 

 dwelling on its wretched internal state, so adverse to all sci- 

 entific inquiries ; it is enough to state that there was a like ig- 

 norance of plants in other countries, and that the idea of di- 

 stinct Floras as guides to students had not been conceived. 

 The earliest works in Ireland, as in England, were chiefly in- 

 tended to guide the medical practitioner, u the culler of sim- 

 ples," where to find what he wanted. It was not till 1 762, when 



