54 
The Irish Naturalist. 
March, 
Plant Lore. 
To come to the immediate subject of these notes, and 
dealing first of all with plants, much of the material may be 
'.onveniently arranged so as to illustrate two beliefs or 
doctrines which appear to be widely prevalent in Ireland. 
The first may be called the doctrine of Transmogrifica- 
tion OF Species, the second the doctrine of Sexes in 
Plants, a doctrine far older than and utterly distinct 
from the Sexual System of Linnaeus. 
In accordance with the Transmogrification Doctrine, 
which anticipates and in audacity far surpasses the Mutation 
or Discontinuous Variation theory of De Vries, a species 
is held to have an innate capacity, within the life -time 
of a single individual, of producing another species belonging 
to a distinct genus or even to a distinct Order or Class. The 
new species is usually held, and not unjustly, to be the 
old species gone wild. For instance, at Feenone between 
Louisburgh and the Killary, in 191 1, a man pointed me 
out the Royal Fern, and said, " We call them Wild Rann- 
yocks," the Rannyock proper, the sane and steady Rann- 
yock, being here, as everywhere in Gaelic Ireland, the 
Common Bracken. Again, in Clare Island, Sparganium or the 
Bur- Reed is held to be Wild Shellistring or Flagger. A 
countryman near Kilbarrick, Co. Dublin, once assured me 
that the common Centaur ea nigra or Blackhead grew out 
of the Plaintain or Ribwort, and, to cap these instances, 
a farmer near Codes Bridge at Garristown was quite 
positive that a flowering plant of Angelica which I pointed 
out to him in a ditch had originated in the Flaggers or 
Yellow Iris that grew alongside. — "Sometimes" he said, 
" them Flaggers blossom out that-a-way ; more times 
they don't. Wild Flaggers they call them." This last 
informant, who was quite enthusiastic about plants, I came 
across, or rather he followed me to see what I was at, 
as I sought in vain for Rumex maritimus which once grew 
along the slow stream or deep channel by which the old 
Garristown Bog was drained. I was long puzzled by the 
name "Codes Bridge" cut on a slab of the parapet of 
