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The Irish Naturalist, 



January, 



Anyone familiar with American or with German 

 journals will know that geography is no longer a 

 merely descriptive science. While the description of 

 surface -features has been undertaken with far more scru- 

 pulous precision than of old, an attempt is made to connect 

 them on the one hand with their modes of origin, and on the 

 other with their influence on living things, from mosses 

 and marmots up to man. We talk vaguely of " our 

 country," with a genuine feeling for it ; but in most cases the 

 grounds for this sentiment are concealed even from our- 

 selves. The pure beauty of a chain of hills, a band of 

 purple against the evening air, appeals to an instinct that 

 is more ingrained in Irish folk than in those of many other 

 lands ; but a Tipperary man will feel more affection for the 

 uplands of Knockmealdown than for the serrated edge of 

 Malvern, while he will set against the burial -hill of Maeve 

 in Connaught the limestone boss of Cashel of the Kings. 



It is this natural and accumulated heritage that goes 

 by the name of country. Men fight and die for their 

 country, so they say, but in reality for what has 

 been reared in its wide and wind-swept spaces or in the 

 compelling shadows of its glens. Strength of body and 

 courage of soul have been brought to this focus by in- 

 vaders from other lands ; and it is well to remember that 

 the earliest human occupants of Europe were invaders 

 on the acquired heritage of the Mammoth, the Rhinoceros, 

 and the Giant Deer. But such culture as invaders brought 

 to Europe with them has long become moulded into local 

 forms and usages. The conditions of the cultivation of the 

 soil have become reflected in the cultivation of the race. 

 The ground of the country, solum patriae, may be obscured 

 by the throng of chariots and of armed men trooping to the 

 ford ; but from its well -wrought furrows it has given those 

 armed men birth. 



The study of an Irish county, or even of a group of 

 townlands, becomes in every sense a work of natural history. 

 The naturalist will thus provide a sound basis for the archae- 

 ologist, and the association of the two types of observer 

 in our field-clubs will tend to become further justified. 

 Our river-systems, on the other hand, are in much need of 



