62 
The Irish Naturalist. 
March' 
bunculp " applied to what would appear to be a mysterious 
aquatic animal, and the well-known fact that the Spaniards 
had long-continued intercourse with south and south-west 
Ireland suggested the possibility of working out an 
interesting connection between Lough Geal and the remote 
Amazon Valley. It might very well have been that some 
of the followers of the intrepid Spanish conquistador es who 
had fought in Peru had settled in, or at all events visited, 
Kerry, and brought with them the name of the mystic 
Amazonian " Carbunculo." Such a fine mouth-filling word 
would have caught the fancy of the Kerryman and ousted the 
less sonorous pix^fc. 
Keen to follow up the scent, I at once wrote to Dr. 
Wallace, asking for further particulars of the Carbunculo, 
but he dashed my hopes by replying that he had forgotten 
all about it, though he thought it likely that Mr. Bates, 
his companion in much of his Amazon travels, would be 
able to assist me. Mr. Bates, then Secretary of the Geo- 
graphical Society, was written to, but with no better result. 
He knew nothing about the Carbunculo, and had long since 
ceased, as he told me, to take any interest in such things. 
So the question still remains open and may be recommended 
as an interesting one to engage the activities of any member 
of this Club who may be in touch with the Jesuit missions 
of the Upper Amazon. Sir Thomas Brown, discussing the 
Carbuncle, the precious stone, not the inhabitant of Lough 
Geal, says, in his Vulgar Errors, that most fascinating 
treatise on Unnatural History : — " Whether a carbuncle 
doth flame in the dark or shine like a coal, though generally 
agreed on by common believers, is very much questioned 
by many." 
This long-winded discussion of the " Carrabuncle " is 
given here as an admirable example of a folk-lore wild-goose 
chase. 
The next of my subjective animals is the Ba6 tlifge, 
or the Water Horse. This appears to be quite a rare animal 
in Ireland, though common in the Western Highlands of 
Scotland, where the " Carrabuncle " is unknown. Campbell 
of Islay in his famous West Highland Tales has much to say 
about the 6^6 Uifse, and tells us that descriptions of the 
