Hart — On the Mountain Flora of Ireland. 
513 
logical bearings of plant-distribution from my records. If so, my object 
"will be attained. And probably any mountaineering botanist will find 
it easy to make additions and corrections to my notes in many cases. 
In that case, tbe fact of my having incited others to such observations 
will remain always a source of satisfaction ; for it is my belief that a 
considerable degree of accuracy is attainable in this direction, and that 
plants maintain their mountain strongholds, surrounded, as they are, 
by serried ranks of foes and sentries with rigorously limited precision. 
I mean in the majority of cases. Waifs and strays, seedlings, and 
annuals are beside the question. These are the exceptions which 
prove the rule. Those who have the ground hold it ; and with the 
exception of an exceedingly slow and gradual diminution of Alpines 
in some stations, which is not improbably taking place, in all likeli- 
hood the plants on the hill and cliff-sides are as constant to their 
altitudes as the hills and cliffs themselves. This is true, of course, 
only so far as mankind, either by marauding or by drainage, or some 
other form of interference, does not alter the natural state of things. 
IN'or is it to be deemed incorrect because of natural accidents, which 
occasionally, in a limited way, disturb the regularity, as when a 
saxifrage is found far below its natural limit, because it has been 
carried down by a torrent to a situation which it could not maintain 
longer than the first occasion upon which the torrent happened to 
make for itself another course. Again, a block of soil with Alpine 
vegetation may drop down a cliff, loosened by winter frosts, and for 
^ few years introduce a group of strangers to an uncongenial situation, 
where they may flourish for a period, and where some few may actually 
become established. Those who do will probably be found elsewhere 
less open to any charge of intrusion at a similar altitude. 
Some counties of Ireland have received less attention than I 
could have wished. I have very few records from Antrim, where, 
however, there are no mountains up to two thousand feet. Erom 
Wicklow, also, I would have wished a wider series of observations ; 
but "Wicklow, though chiefly mountainous, yields less of botanical 
interest than any other mountainous county in Ireland. Its wide- 
stretching deserts of upland bog, heather, and turf are often extra- 
ordinarily devoid of any sort of attraction for many miles at a time, 
and where broken ground and lovely scenery occur in Wicklow it 
is nearly always at low altitudes, unsuitable for mountain plants ; so 
that the absence of records from Wicklow must be in part attributed 
to the lack of material for observation. I am probably as familiar 
with the Wicklow mountains as anyone, and I have spent weeks 
