50 
THE ARAN ISLANDS. 
Mar., 1891. 
feet, contain an abundant flora, of course of lime-loving 
plants. I have nowhere seen more luxuriant specimens of 
many ferns, as the Ceterach , Scolopendrium, Asplenium Buta- 
muraria , Trichomanes, Adiantum nigrum and marinum ; and 
last, but not least, of the true British Maidenhair, Adiantum, 
Capillus-Veneris. Of the latter fern I should think that there 
are more plants growing here than in the remainder of the 
Three Kingdoms altogether. The wind, however, and the 
cattle between them cut off these plants to the level of the 
surface of the rock, so that no green shows at a distance. 
The only parts that can really be cultivated are the slopes 
where talus can lodge, and the places which have been covered 
by the drifting sand. I was quite surprised to see a small 
circular enclosure which had been built on the flat bare rock, 
near the beach, at the north point of the great island. In 
this a thick layer of sand and seaweed had been placed, and 
is now producing a fine crop of grass. Excellent potatoes 
are grown in this sand manured by seaweed, as is also the 
case in the Channel Islands. 
A peculiarity of the stone walls is that no gates or openings 
are left in them, so that when a cow has to be brought from 
a field at a distance from the road, five or six walls have to 
be pulled down and rebuilt. 
When calcareous rocks are in contact with the sea it is 
usual to find many caverns excavated by the action of the 
water, but in Aran there are very few. In many places the 
lower part of the lofty cliffs has been excavated, leaving 
ledges on which perch innumerable guillemots, mingled with 
a few puffins, razorbills, gulls, and choughs, the latter rare 
bird breeding here. The only place where there is anything 
in the nature of a cavern is in the south cliff of Ara Mor, 
where two tunnels have been formed about 150 feet long, the 
roofs at the inner end of which have fallen in, leaving open¬ 
ings through which water is driven during gales, gaining for 
them the local name of puffing-holes. 
Traces are still left here of one of the glacial epochs, when 
this part of the world was covered by an ice-sheet, and fine 
examples are to be found of erratic boulders, or “roclies 
perches,” of granite, brought from the Connemara district, and 
left by the retreating ice on the limestone. On the opposite 
shore, on the slopes of Errisbeg, near Roundstone, I have 
seen the rocks planed by the action of the ice, and grooved by 
the stones carried beneath it, as the glacier ground them in its 
slow advance. Of course in Aran itself all such grooves and 
scratches have long been dissolved away by the effects of the 
abundant rainfall on a soluble rock. These boulders are 
called here Connemara stones. 
