MISS MACNAB ON A BOTANICAL RAMBLE ON BEN LETTERY. IQ? 
XIX._ A Botanical Ramble on Ben Lettery, Connemara. 
By Miss Macnab. 
(Read 13th January, 1898.) 
The strange group of mountains known as the Twelve Pins rises 
from the bogs of Connemara in the very heart of this bleak and 
lonely region. Their great rounded quartzite summits dominate every 
part of the district; at times seen rising above the Atlantic mists which 
fill the valleys and add weirdness and mystery to the scene; again, 
glittering like marble in the sunshine; later still, all aglow and trans¬ 
figured with the rosy tints of sunset. 
No one who has admired from a distance their changing beauty 
but must wish to penetrate further into these mountain fastnesses, 
and, as their average height is only about 2200 feet, this is no great 
undertaking in good weather for those who enjoy a scramble. 
We chose Ben Lettery, the most southern of the twelve, as being 
easily accessible, and one of the best view-points of the district. From 
Clifden, where we were staying, the Light Railway and the early 
morning train carried us to the lonely wayside station of Ballyna- 
hinch. The country is bleak and bare, with little or no cultivation, 
the number of stones forming the principal feature. In some places 
every bit of soil is covered with them, and one might imagine a town 
fallen into ruins and the stones left lying as they fell. The dykes 
are made of great stones loosely piled together, and, as we left Bally- 
nahinch, and took the pleasant road through woods and by the side 
of sparkling lochs, we noticed the long spike-like flowers and round 
fleshy leaves of Cotyledon umbilicus growing among the stones where 
apparently nothing else could find root-hold. The lochs were fringed 
with bulrushes and covered with fine white and yellow water-lilies, 
and the better-built walls, especially the parapets of the bridges, were 
green with Ceterach officinarwn.^ Aspleniuin Tricliomanes.^ Asplenium 
Ruta-muraria, and Polypodium vulgare. By the wayside we gathered 
Erythrcp.a centauriwn and Lotus corniculatus, and Lytlirum Saltcaria 
was very plentiful, in some parts quite colouring the landscape. 
After about three miles the slope of the mountain rose before us, 
and we stopped at a solitary cabin to ask our way. Quite a superior 
specimen this of an Irish cabin, thatched and whitewashed, with 
a donkey and some geese and pigs feeding outside, and only the 
poultry sharing the living-room with the family. Much more primi¬ 
tive was a cabin we had visited a day or two before, in which all we 
could make out in the dim light was a great peat fire smouldering in 
the middle of the floor, and whose master, an old man, ragged but 
