246 



The Irish Naturalist. 



November, 



frequent repetition of. the capital / before each of the Irish county 

 numbers. In cases where it may be necessary to refer to one of the 

 Irish county numbers separately, then the capital / may be prefixed to 

 avoid confusion. 



With Mr. Praegers statement of the objections to Mr. Waddell's pro- 

 posed scheme of numbering the Irish divisions from 113 to 152, as stated 

 in last month's issue of this Journal, I fully concur. The proposed con- 

 secutive numbering for the British Isles from i to 152 has no doubt a 

 specious air of simplicity and uniformity, but none the less is it 

 essentiall}' unscientific and misleading. Nor can any plea of necessity 

 be urged in its favour, unless it be a necessity to reject a carefully 

 thought out and already well accepted scheme of Irish count}^ numbers 

 simply because it is Irish. 



What is of cardinal importance for Irish botanists — and, indeed, for 

 Irish zoologists as well, since the day is not far distant when the county 

 distribution of the various branches of our Irish fauna will be taken in 

 hand — is this, that the accepted scheme of numbering and sub-division 

 of the Irish vice-counties should continue to hold the field. The use, 

 even in a British Isles Catalogue, of the numbers T13 to 152 for the Irish 

 County Divisions would inevitably tend to weaken the hold of Mr. 

 Praeger's scheme of numbering in Ireland itself, a scheme which so far 

 from being ill advised, as Mr. Waddell considers it to be, is in my 

 opinion the only really well considered scheme in existence. 



N. Coi^GAN. 



Sandycove, Co. Dublin. 



The advantages of one common scheme for recording the range in 

 Ireland of all living creatures, whether animals or plants, are too obvious 

 to need advocacy. When such a scheme has been carefully thought 

 out and published for the best-known of all our groups— the Seed-plants 

 and Fern-plants — it seems to me only reasonable to accept and use it 

 for our lists of other organisms. And I would venture to express a very 

 earnest hope that in the forthcoming list of the Hepaticse of the British 

 Islands, Mr. Praeger's numbering of the County-divisions may be 

 adopted, with the prefix "I." to each number as suggested by him, or 

 of " Ir." to the series as suggested by Mr. Colgau. Of these alternatives 

 the former seems to me preferable, because each number would then tell 

 its own complete story. 



Mr. Waddell's suggestion to adopt Mr. Praeger's divisions, numbering 

 them 1 1 3-152, seems to me the worst possible solution of the 

 difficulty. A series of numbers in which South Kerry follows Shetland 

 is thoroughly unscientific, and Mr. Waddell's enumeration would clash 

 hopelessly with the two schemes (Watson's and Taylor's) already put 

 forward on this principle, with their numbers 1 13-149 and 1 13-148, 

 respectively. If the authors of the projected Catalogue of Hepaticse 

 cannot accept Mr. Praeger's scheme, they had better adopt Watson's old 

 scheme as it stands. But a mere Knglishman fails to understand how 

 there can be two opinions among Irish botanists on such a question. 



Gi^o. H. Carpp:nTI5r. 



