'915. 



Richa7-d Manliffe Barnngton. 



199 



Though a few of these — such as the Woodchat — are rep- 

 resented in the collection by legs and wings, nearly all were 

 sent entire, the lightkeepers having recognised them as 

 probably rare enough to be worth preserving ; and this in 

 itself is no small tribute to the acumen developed in so many 

 of the men by Barrington's encouraging influence. 



With all his absorption in migration work there was, 

 however, no falling off in interest in other branches of nature 

 study. Indeed, he would sometimes say in a quiet talk 

 that plants always exercised over him a fascination even 

 greater than that possessed by birds. The charming grounds 

 of Fassaroe are the chosen breeding haunts of two such 

 particularly interesting birds as the Blackcap and the Cross- 

 bill, and it undoubtedly afforded him a rare satisfaction 

 during the present year to watch some Crossbills at their 

 nesting operations near his house, while some observations 

 well worthy of record on the nest material used by the Black- 

 cap furnished matter for his last communication to British 

 Birds, only a few weeks before his death. Yet what thrilled 

 him with most pleasure during his walks about those 

 grounds was the sight of some of his favourite and long- 

 studied plants — the self-sown seedlings of the Arbutus that 

 flourished as in a native home, the little Dodder plant that 

 had so long held its own in a spot where its presence com- 

 pletely belied its general reputation, the Mimulus that im- 

 parted most extraordinary beauty to the stony bed of the 

 Enniskerry stream, and the Soapwort that flourished in 

 masses on the adjoining bank. Nothing else in natural 

 history, he once told a member of his family, gave him such 

 intense pleasure as the finding of a new plant. 



The re-discovery by himself and H. C. Hart in 1892 of 

 the long -lost Rubus Chamaemonis, in an expedition specially 

 undertaken for that purpose to the Sperrin Mountains, 

 was quite a sensational episode in Irish botanical history ; 

 and it was all the more gratifying to Barrington's warm 

 heart as yielding a triumphant proof of the accuracy of 

 A. G. More's judgment in holding, against a host of dis- 

 believers, that the original record of the plant's existence 

 on those mountains must be correct. The finders having 

 agreed that the secret of the exact locality should be pre- 



